It is a testament to Isozaki’s independence that, while subject to Metabolist influence, he always maintained a certain distance from the fictive utopianism of the movement, preferring to comment from the wings, as it were, rather than respond too directly to catalytic exhortations of Noboru Kawazoe who was Metabolism’s main ideologue.
Thus, while being theoretically concerned with the creation of transformable mega-structures, Isozaki literally kept his feet on the ground as he continued to be involved, after Tokyo Bay, with the more prominent commissions of the Tange office. At the same time, doubts were beginning to arise in Isozaki’s mind as to the maniacal aims of Metabolism, as typified, say, by Kisho Kurokawa’s Wall City proposal of 1959. Moreover, as far as Isozaki was concerned, equally unbalanced forms of megalomania could be detected in the work of URTEC itself.
Kenneth Frampton, Arata Isozaki 1959-1978