"The impact of Le Corbusier’s theories on Japanese architectural culture. From Towards an Architecture to the Metabolism Manifesto: Paris-Tokyo 1923-1960 "

Le Corbusier’s Vers une Architecture stands as a key modern manifesto whose influence extended to Japan and the emergence of the Metabolism movement in the late 1950s. Admired by Japanese architects trained in Le Corbusier’s Paris atelier, his ideas resonated strongly in postwar Tokyo, notably with the National Museum of Western Art (1959). In 1960, Metabolism was articulated by Kikutake, Kurokawa, Maki, and Kawazoe as a vision of architecture capable of growth and change. This paper argues that Vers une Architecture constitutes a latent theoretical basis of the Metabolism Manifesto, analysing both texts through shared concerns with technology, poetics, organic growth, and the cultural transfer between East and West.