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The widespread urban planning and reconstruction necessitated by the
devastation of World War II produced such major architects as Maekawa Kunio
and Tange Kenzo. Maekawa, a student of world-famous architect Charles
LeCorbusier, produced thoroughly international , functional modern works.
Tange, who worked at first for Maekawa, supported this concept. Both were
notable for infusing Japanese aesthetic ideas into starkly contemporary
buildings, returning to the spatial concepts and modular proportions of
tatami (sleeping mats), using textures to enliven the ubiquitous
ferroconcrete and steel, and integrating gardens and sculpture into their
designs. Tange used the cantilever principle in a pillar and beam system
reminiscent of ancient imperial palaces; the pillar--a hallmark of Japanese
traditional monumental timber construction-- became fundamental to his
designs.
Maki Fumihiko advanced new city planning ideas based on the principle of
layering or cocooning around an inner space (oku), a Japanese spatial
concept that was adapted to urban needs. He also advocated the use of empty
or open spaces (ma), a Japanese aesthetic principle reflecting Buddhist
spatial ideas. Another quintessentially Japanese aesthetic concept was a
basis for Maki designs, which focused on openings onto intimate garden views
at ground level while cutting off sometimes-ugly skylines. A dominant 1970s
architectural concept, the "metabolism" of convertibility, provided for
changing the functions of parts of buildings according to use, and remains
influential.
A major architect of the 1970s and 1980s was Isozaki Arata, originally a
student and associate of Tange's, who also based his style on the
LeCorbusier tradition and then turned his attention toward the further
exploration of geometric shapes and cubic silhouettes. He synthesized
Western high-technology building concepts with peculiarly Japanese spatial,
functional, and decorative ideas to create a modern Japanese style.
Isozaki's predilection for the cubic grid and trabeated pergola in
large-scale architecture, for the semicircular vault in domestic-scale
buildings, and for extended barrel vaulting in low, elongated buildings led
to a number of striking variations. New Wave architects of the 1980s were
influenced by his designs, either pushing to extend his balanced style,
often into mannerism, or reacting against them.
 A number of avant-garde experimental groups were encompassed in the New
Wave of the late 1970s and the 1980s. They reexamined and modified the
formal geometric structural ideas of modernism by introducing metaphysical
concepts, producing some startling fantasy effects in architectural design.
In contrast to these innovators, the experimental poetic minimalism of Ando
Tadao embodied the postmodernist concerns for a more balanced, humanistic
approach than that of structural modernism's rigid formulations. And 's
buildings provided a variety of light sources, including extensive use of
glass bricks and opening up spaces to the outside air. He adapted the inner
courtyards of traditional Osaka houses to new urban architecture, using open
stairways and bridges to lessen the sealed atmosphere of the standard city
dwelling. His ideas became ubiquitous in the 1980s, when buildings were
commonly planned around open courtyards or plazas, often with stepped and
terraced spaces, pedestrian walkways, or bridges connecting building
complexes . In 1989 And became the third Japanese to receive France's Prix
de l'Académie d'Architecture, an indication of the international strength of
the major Japanese architects, all of whom produced important structures
abroad during the 1980s. Japanese architects were not only skilled
practitioners in the modern idiom but also enriched postmodern designs
worldwide with innovative spatial perceptions, subtle surface texturing,
unusual use of industrial materials, and a developed awareness of ecological
and topographical problems.
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