TOKYO (AP) – Kenzo Tange, a prize-winning architect celebrated for the beauty of his structures, including stadiums for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, died Tuesday. He was 91.

Tange, who worked until he was 88, died of hear failure. He had been resting at his Tokyo home, said Kazuo Aso, a spokesman for his design office, Tange Associates.

Tange saw in the ashes of World War II a chance to create not just new buildings, but new cities. His Peace Center in Hiroshima, built four years after the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, was designed to become the “spiritual core” of the city.

In the work considered his masterpiece – the twin gymnasiums designed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics – he placed two comma-shaped buildings with sweeping roofs like upside-down ships’ hulls so as to connect two busy Tokyo districts.

The jury that awarded Tange the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1987 called him a leading theoretician of architecture and an inspiring teacher.

“His stadiums for the Olympic Games held in Tokyo in 1964 are often described as among the most beautiful structures built in the 20th century,” the jury said.

Later in his career, Tange designed buildings in China, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Nigeria, Italy, Yugoslavia and the United States.

Born in Osaka on Sept. 4, 1913, Tange’s visions were often ambitious, including a plan to redesign the chaotic, haphazard streets of Tokyo.

As a professor at Tokyo University’s Architecture School, Tange also taught Kisho Kurokawa, who designed Amsterdam’s famed Van Gogh Museum and the Kuala Lumpur airport. Fumihiko Maki, the architect of the Spiral Building in Tokyo’s chic Omotesando district and the 1993 winner of the Pritzker Prize, was another of his students.

He is survived by his wife, Takako and their son Noritaka, 47, an architect.