JAPANESE URBAN ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS: AN OVERVIEW OF PROJECTS AND SCHEMES FOR MARINE CITIES DURING 1960S-1990S

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a short but comprehensive overview of the historical evolution of the concepts of the “artificial urban island” and “marine city” devised and developed in the context of Japanese architecture and urban planning during the second-half of the twentieth century. These concepts were a consequence of the severe shortage of buildable land for new industrial and freight complexes, as well as for housing and public facilities. From the futuristic urban morphologies of Metabolism and Kenzo Tange's plans, which developed as polemic rejection of late modernist architectural principles, to the engineering approach of official government planning schemes, based on the provision of massive-scale public infrastructures, this study is a chronological survey of the main marine city projects conceived in Japan during the last 4 decades. This paper further analyzes and highlights the connection between the urban forms and planning paradigms of the artificial islands and briefly investigates the needs and ambitions behind these urban marine prototypes.