The Nakagin Capsule Tower is slated for demolition. One module has been donated to the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. (Louis Templado)
Icon of 'metabolism' donated to Saitama museum
The remarkable thing about Tokyo’s landmarks is how quickly they come and go.
Japan’s cutting edge architects of the 1960s and 1970s—living in what we can only now look back on as a golden age—likened the process to an organism feeding and growing on its own cells and called it “metabolism.” They actually welcomed it, but now it’s their turn to be swallowed.
Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007) was perhaps the most recognizable name in the movement, but that has not been enough to stop the planned destruction of one of his most innovative works, the Nakagin Capsule Tower.
Located on the rim of Tokyo’s Ginza district and actually composed of two towers, the building is made up of 140 room cubes—removable and stackable in the blueprints—that earned it a place in history as an early example of capsule architecture. In real life, getting the plumbing and wiring connected properly proved difficult, and the condominium has been in disrepair for close to two decades.
One capsule module has been detached to serve in the exhibition "Metabolism: the City of the Future," a retrospective on the movement led by Kurokawa, Kiyonori Kikutake and Noboru Kawazoe, among other architects. It continues until Jan. 15 at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi.
After the exhibition, the six-square-meter module, crammed with a bed, a bath-toilet unit, a television, a radio and a telephone, will be trucked to a more permanent home: the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama. The Saitama museum is also a Kurokawa design.
The cell may be only one section of a masterpiece, says museum head Akira Tatehata, but it will still offer a more direct experience of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, once it’s gone, than a floor plan or film clip could. The museum has yet to announce when the module, measuring 2.5 meters wide, 4.1 meters long and 2.6 meters high and weighing 3.8 tons, will be put on show.
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