An organization including noted architects will be launched as early as this summer to promote an attempt to have the main building of Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, registered on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list, it has been learned.

The stadium was designed by world famous architect Kenzo Tange (1913-2005) for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

The promotional group will likely include Kengo Kuma, 61, designer of the new National Stadium main venue of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, and architect Fumihiko Maki, 87. The organization aims to get the main building of the gymnasium, called Yoyogi 1st Gymnasium, registered on the list before the 2020 Games, for which it is planned to be used as a venue.

The gymnasium was used for swimming competitions at the 1964 Olympics. Since then, it has been used for various sporting events and as a concert venue. At the 2020 Tokyo Games, it is to be used for handball events in the Olympics and badminton and wheelchair rugby in the Paralympics. The arena, which has an area of 14,426 square meters and a height of 40.37 meters, seats 13,243 people.

The gymnasium’s main feature is the way it is constructed, using no interior pillars and a roof suspended by wires attached to two main external pillars. Maki, an admirer of Tange, said, “It is epoch-making architecture; hardly anything compares even today.”

Tange, who led the postwar Japan architectural world, was an internationally known architect whose works include Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. He received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which is regarded as the Nobel Prize of the architectural world, in 1987.

Regarding modern architecture, a UNESCO advisory body recently recommended that buildings designed by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, including the National Museum of Western Art in Taito Ward, Tokyo, be registered on the World Cultural Heritage list.

In an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun, Kuma said: “The modern architectural movement that started in Europe and the United States developed in a special way in Japan. Tange played a major role in its development. It would be nice if his achievements could be marked as world heritage.” Speech