From a series written for ABC Radio National’s Blueprint for Living. This piece was first broadcast on 2nd December 2023. You can listen to the audio here.

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The Yoyogi National Gymnasium, built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, leaves no doubt that beauty and utility are intrinsically linked. Its glorious swooping form not only provides the perfect performance space but mirrors the energy of the athletes using it. It’s a building that swirls and swishes as though in constant movement, and it’s hard to believe it’s sixty years old, given today’s fashion for organically shaped buildings. Certainly it stunned the world at its opening. It was a lesson in the power of engineering, in much the same way as Sydney’s Opera House was, and gave pause to those who thought modernist architecture was blocky and boring. It was also, like the Opera House, a symbol of a country’s reinvention.

It’s the work of Kenzo Tange, who was inspired to study architecture by Le Corbusier. Indeed, Tange’s earliest work, the main buildings in the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, which he also planned, shows a classic Corbusian simplicity with a flat-roofed concrete building hoisted on slender pillars. Ten years later, though, Tange concluded that beauty lay at the core of functionalism. ‘Architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart,’ he said.  What makes this sports hall, and the mini-me companion at its side, so remarkable is just how stunning that functionality is. The larger hall holds 15000 spectators and has two concrete pylons with two thick cables slung between them onto which a network of thinner cables was intended to be attached. This would support the steel roof plates but experiments showed it would sag and sway too much so a stiffer steel frame was used instead that was attached to the main cables at the top. The smaller hall, built to hold 4000 spectators, has only one pylon, with the roof coiling around it like a serpent. The suspended roof means there’s clear space below and made the main hall the largest of its sort in the world at that time. While it was a show of engineering audacity, the roof also had the gracefulness of a swagged curtain, giving the interior a theatricality that perfectly complemented the athletics it hosted. It was an evolution of an idea developed by Eero Saarinen for his much smaller hockey stadium at Yale University a few years earlier, as well as a nod to the tented pavilion Le Corbusier designed for Brussel’s Expo 58. Tange’s buildings go much further, having a monumental confidence that is almost other-worldly and which remain a breathtaking sight. The buildings came at a pivotal moment in Japan’s history. They showed that Japanese architecture could match or even surpass the best in the world, including the stunning pavilions Pier Luigi Nervi designed for the 1960 Rome Olympics. But Tange imbued the cutting-edge engineering with an inherently Japanese quality, evoking the tailored, woven, folded precision that accompanies much of Japanese craft. There’s even a hint of samurai armour in the steel plates of the roof. That same year Japan astonished the world with its first high-speed shinkansen trains, demonstrating its shift from competent manufacturer to startling innovator, where a Made In Japan stamp would become a mark of quality and design excellence. The sports halls at Yoyogi therefore stand as celebrations, not only of athletic ability but for the way a country can meet the contemporary world without losing its heritage. Tange is often seen as the father of Japanese modernism and these sports halls stand as perhaps his finest moment. A moment when beauty and functionalism became the same thing, taking architecture to a higher plane and changing our expectations forever.