Kenzo Tange Quotations

Tradition can, to be sure, participate in a creation, but it can no longer be creative itself.

Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long.

I first decided architecture was for me when I saw Le Corbusier's designs in a Japanese magazine in the 1930s.

I am aware of changes gradually taking place in my own designs as part of my thinking on this matter

Nevertheless, the basic forms, spaces, and appearances must be logical

Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future.

I feel however, that we architects have a special duty and mission... (to contribute) to the socio-cultural development of architecture and urban planning

There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart. There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart

We live in a world where great incompatibles co-exist: the human scale and the superhuman scale, stability and mobility, permanence and change, identity and anonymity, comprehensibility and universality.

I like to think there is something deep in our own world of reality that will create a dynamic balance between technology and human existence, the relationship between which has a decisive effect on contemporary cultural forms and social structure.