The Landscape Design in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park

Kenzo Tange's landscape design for Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, proposed in 1949 and refined over decades, revolutionized monumentality through an 'invisible axis' that framed the Atomic Bomb Dome without massive structures. The study reveals how this concept evolved: while the 1949 plan used turf, cypress grids, and evergreen trees to divide space, later proposals (e.g., 1970s) shifted to stone-paved paths mirroring the bombed city's layout and an extended Peace Pond to materialize the axis. Research analyzed Tange's competition-winning drawings, historical archives, and unpublished sketches, uncovering tensions between commemorating victims (northern park) and promoting peace (southern park). The 1952 cenotaph disrupted the invisible axis, while unrealized 1960s/70s designs blurred functional boundaries by integrating boundary markers of demolished buildings. This work highlights how adaptive redesign reflects historical constraints—postwar material shortages—and the enduring challenge of balancing remembrance with symbolic peace-building.

MAKI, R., & NIIHATA, T. (2018). THE LANDSCAPE DESIGN IN HIROSHIMA PEACE MEMORIAL PARK. Journal of Architecture and Planning (Transactions of AIJ), 83(748), 1117–1125. https://doi.org/10.3130/aija.83.1117