Abstract
Despite the recent revival of interest in the work of Metabolism, Japan’s architectural avant-garde in the 1960s, the Metabolist discourse of the city and its impact on modern society has not been given its justice due to the stereotype of “megastructure” that has always been used to label the Metabolist concepts. Starting from an observation of the changing scholarly as well as professional concepts, this article reinterprets the history of Metabolism by focusing on a relationship between urbanism and utopianism, which underlies Metabolism’s legacy in contemporary architecture and city building. Moving away from the unitary historiography of megastructure, it examines the Metabolist city through its three important paradigms of urbanism: megastructure, group form, and the ruins. Each inspires a model for urban design and addresses urban growth and transformation from a particular perspective. Together, they provide a lens into the dynamics of contemporary metropolises in the world characterized by the pluralism in ideologies and visions. The influence of the Metabolist urban utopias is analyzed through study of Asian cities with their rapid pace of urbanization or reurbanization.
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