ZHONGJIE LIN

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Nakagin Capsule Tower
Revisiting the Future of the Recent
Past

The debates surrounding the proposed demolition of Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower
provide a unique opportunity to re-examine Metabolism’s historic role in postwar modernism and its
influence on contemporary architecture. Although one can argue that contradictions between urban
development and architectural conservation are a commonplace characteristic of the contemporary
metropolis, the intense conflict between redevelopment and conservation in Japan is emblematic of
an enduring cultural attitude toward urban change that relies upon a paradoxical relationship
between transformation and continuity. This distinctly Japanese cultural attitude underlies Metabolist
urban theory and informs the design of the Nakagin Capsule Tower. The building was an experimental
project meant to support a new postwar lifestyle and facilitate change and renewal in an increasingly
dynamic urban fabric. In many ways, the ideas and values that created the Nagakin Capsule Tower are
the same ideas and values that are threatening to destroy it. An examination of the building’s recent
past and possible futures reveals the complex legacy of Metabolism’s unfulfilled urban visions.

Introduction
In April 2007, a brief report on Architectural
Record’s online journal drew worldwide attention to
a building in Tokyo: ‘‘Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule
Tower to Be Razed.’’1 This news astonished many
readers because the Nakagin building is not only an
icon of postwar modern architecture in Japan but
also represents a rare and arguably the finest built
work resulting from the historic Metabolist
movement. Completed in 1972, the building
consists of two interconnected towers at eleven and
thirteen stories, respectively, supporting a total of
144 interchangeable ‘‘capsules’’ in the size and
shape of a shipping container. Each capsule houses
a self-contained residential unit attached to one of
the towers with flexible joints, showcasing the
essential Metabolist idea of adaptability and
replaceability (Figure 1). Nakagin Capsule Tower
was listed as an architectural heritage site by
DoCoMoMo in 2006, but no concrete measure has
been taken to protect the building, and its interior
has fallen into disrepair despite its continuous use
as a residential building (Figure 2). Concerns have
also been raised among its residents about the
health issues related to the use of asbestos on the
capsules and the building’s ability to withstand
earthquakes.2 These concerns prompted the
property owners to vote to tear down the Capsule
Tower and replace it with a new fourteen-story
tower, despite a popular campaign launched by
Kisho Kurokawa to save the building.3
The campaign to save Nakagin Capsule Tower
coincides with a renewed interest in postwar avant-
garde movements and a growing appreciation of the
Metabolists’ futuristic design concepts and dynamic
forms.The Metabolists’ work first became known to
the world through a few articles by Günter Nitschke in
Architectural Design in 1964 and Reyner Banham’s
1976 Megastructure.4 Banham associated
Metabolism with the other megastructural
movements in the West between the mid-1950s and
early 1970s. Writing in the aftermath of the 1968
worldwide student uprisings and the 1973 energy
crisis that led to the surge of environmental
movements and social activism, Banham used an
ironic subtitle, Urban Futures of the Recent Past,
implying that these ambitious megastructural
concepts were no longer relevant to contemporary
architecture and cities. He wrote: ‘‘For the two
decades of its maximum potency, it was also,
probably, the hinge of a crisis in architectural thinking
that may also prove to have been the terminal crisis
of ‘Modern’ architecture as we have known it.’’5
These megastructural movements, despite
Banham’s assertion, have been re-examined and
revived in recent years by architectural scholars and
institutions. In 2002, the Royal Institute of British
Architects awarded a RIBA Gold Medal to
Archigram, indicating a remarkable turnaround in
attitude toward this avant-garde group, one no less
ironic considering Archigram’s early rebellion against
established institutions and practices.6 This
recognition was soon followed by a series of
publications and exhibitions on those postwar
megastructural movements featured in Banham’s
book.7 These publications and exhibitions focus
mainly on reconstructing the histories of these
megastructural movements and reinterpreting their
architectural and urban theories as well as their

13 LIN Journal of Architectural Education,

pp. 13–32 ª 2011 ACSA
1. Kisho Kurokawa, Nakagin Capsule Tower, 1972 (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).

Nakagin Capsule Tower 14


2. Damaged ceiling in Nakagin Capsule Tower (Photo taken in 2009 by author).
political implications in the postwar context.
However, the threat of demolition of Nakagin
Capsule Tower indicates that the discourse must be
extended to the level of specific artifacts to
examine these visionary concepts and their impact
on contemporary urbanism and architecture.
The controversy surrounding Kurokawa’s
building raises a number of questions about the
legacy of the Metabolist movement in Japan and
elsewhere, along with related questions about
preservation practice. Was the Metabolist movement
a regional variation of the postwar fascination with
megastructure, or was it a distinctly Japanese
movement that worked across many scales? Should
Metabolist buildings be preserved, given the
movement’s explicit celebration of continuous
change and adaptability? And, despite the failed
promises of many Metabolist proposals, should
Metabolist ideas inform contemporary design and
conservation? In other words, what is the real
legacy of Metabolism?
Through a discussion of the Nakagin Capsule
Tower’s past, present, and possible future, this
article will address these questions from both an
architectural and urban perspective. I will argue that
the rationale for the preservation of the Nakagin
Capsule Tower lies in its ability to link an architectural
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idea—the capsule, a form of prefabrication—to
Metabolism’s unfulfilled urban visions. On the
architectural scale, I investigate the original
Metabolist ideas leading to the design of the tower
and examine how these ideas advanced architectural
innovations in terms of module and prefabrication.
On the urban scale, I want to contest Banham’s
generalized view of megastructure and demonstrate
that the idea of Metabolism was not only rooted in
the particular Japanese tradition and urban culture
but also embodies multiple paradigms of urbanism,
namely, megastructure, group form, and ruins. Two
of the paradigms—group form and ruins—in fact
offer alternatives to the megastructure concept,
although all three models grew from the central
Metabolist notion of the city as an organism. While a
Metabolist city was never entirely realized and the
attempts to translate Metabolist form into built
projects often failed, the Metabolist notion of urban
transformation and renewal has important lessons for
contemporary architects and urbanists.
Revisiting the Metabolist idea of the city as an
organism in transformation offers new insights into
the dilemmas associated with the conservation of
modern architecture. The Nakagin Capsule Tower is
among a number of notable modern buildings
threatened for demolition in Japan in recent years.
Although one can argue that conflicts between
urban development and architectural conservation
are a commonplace characteristic of the
contemporary metropolis, the Japanese context has
accentuated the contradiction between the growth
of cities and the impulse to preserve historical fabric
and landmarks. The notoriously high cost of land in
Japanese cities has directly impacted these
demolition decisions. On a more fundamental level,
however, intense conflict between redevelopment
and conservation is emblematic of an enduring
cultural attitude toward urban change and
regeneration in Japan, an issue with even more
relevance after the incredible disruption of the
March 2011 earthquake. This attitude in fact
underlay Metabolist urban theory, and Nakagin
Capsule Tower was an experimental project that
intended to facilitate change and renewal through
periodic replacement of capsule housing units. In
other words, the ideas and values that created the
Nagakin Capsule Tower are, to a large extent, the
same ideas and values that are threatening to
destroy it. One has to take into consideration this
relationship when discussing any proposals for
saving the Tower or attempting to re-evaluate the
Metabolist movement. Looking through the lens of
Nakagin Capsule Tower, its history, and current debates
about its likely destruction, this paper tries to
provide a focused yet more integrated understanding
of the legacy of the Metabolist project.
The Metabolist Movement
The Metabolist movement was launched in 1960,
when a group of young architects and designers
published their radical manifesto Metabolism: The
Proposals for New Urbanism at the World Design
Conference in Tokyo.8 Besides Kurokawa, the
founders of the Metabolist group included architects
Kiyonari Kikutake, Masato Otaka, and Fumihiko
Maki, architectural critic Noboru Kawazoe, industrial
designer Ekuan Kenji, and graphic designer Kiyoshi
Awazu. They chose the name ‘‘metabolism’’ for the
group because it indicated a fundamental idea
 3. Kiyonori Kikutake, Marine City, 1959. Model photo (Photo courtesy of Kiyonori Kikutake).

shared among these architects and designers—a

particular biotechnical notion of the ‘‘city as an
organic process,’’ which stood in opposition to the
modernist paradigm of city design as a machinic
system. This perspective was made clear in the
introductory statement of the manifesto:

Metabolism is the name of the group, in which

each member proposes future designs of our
coming world through his concrete designs and
illustrations. We regard human society as a
vital process—a continuous development from
atom to nebula. The reason why we use such a
biological word, metabolism, is that we believe
design and technology should be a denotation
of human society. We are not going to accept
metabolism as a natural historical process, but
try to encourage active metabolic development
of our society through our proposals.9

In their theoretical urban projects, the

Metabolists often envisioned the sea and the sky as
human habitats of the future, and they proposed
that a city would grow, transform, and die like an
organism. To accommodate the growth and
regeneration of the modern city, they called for
establishing a system of urban design distinguishing
elements of different scales and durations, namely,
the ‘‘permanent element’’ such as urban
infrastructure, versus the ‘‘transient element’’ such
as individual houses. Responding to the distinct
‘‘metabolic cycles’’ in the city, the Metabolists’
designs were often characterized by the
combination of a megastructure, serving as the
permanent base, and numerous individual units
attached to the megastructure and subject to more
frequent replacement. For instance, Kikutake’s
Marine City featured numerous standardized
housing units clipped onto a few enormous
ferroconcrete cylindrical towers. The towers serving
as the main structure of the city would grow as
population increased, and the individual living pods
would conduct periodical self-renewal (Figure 3).

Nakagin Capsule Tower 16


4. Kenzo Tange, Plan for Tokyo, 1960. Model photo (Photo courtesy of Tange Associates).
As a dramatic representation of the Metabolists’
concept of city as process, this combination of
megastructure and cell became the trademark of
their architecture.
Although they never became formal members
of the group, Kenzo Tange and Arata Isozaki were
also actively involved in the Metabolist movement.
Tange especially was acknowledged as the mentor
of the Metabolist architects and virtually the
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creator of the group because of his position as
chair of the programs committee of the World
Design Conference. In fact, the program committee
was eventually reorganized to become the
Metabolism group. Tange’s Plan for Tokyo, also
completed in 1960, represented a sophisticated
synthesis of Metabolist ideas on a grand scale
(Figure 4). Featuring a linear series of interlocking
loops that spanned the city across Tokyo Bay, this
plan served as a polemical alternative to the official
plans of Tokyo and proposed to fundamentally
transform the urban structure of this megacity.10
The Metabolists sought an alternative social
order for the world through these proposals for
restructuring rapidly expanding cities. Their design
concepts were full of political implications, often
based on a modern vision of collective society.
Metabolism was often associated with other avant-
garde movements in the 1950s and 1960s, such as
Team 10, the Archigram in Great Britain, the Groupe
d’Etudes d’Architecture Mobile (GEAM) led by Yona
Friedman in France, and Superstudio in Italy.
Rebelling against the status quo of urban
reconstruction in the postwar era, these architect-
urbanists shared an interest in three-dimensional
urban structure as the framework for urban growth,
and they wanted to revolutionize the way the
modern city was built and operated. Owing to the
vast scale and utopian nature of these projects, it
was not surprising that very few of the
megastructural schemes were realized.
With the advent of an energy crisis in the early
1970s and the rise of environmental movements,
megastructure’s popularity among architects,
planners, and potential clients waned.11 In 1976,
when Reyner Banham documented these utopian
movements in Megastructure: Urban Future of the
Recent Past, he called the megastructures
‘‘dinosaurs of the modern movement,’’ referring not
only to their enormous scale but also implying that
they had by then become extinct as a ‘‘species.’’12
Metabolism was no exception. Banham criticized
the ‘‘mind-numbing simplicity’’ of the Metabolists’
theoretical program and accused Tange’s Tokyo Bay
project of having a ‘‘destructive influence’’ on the
French and Italian megastructural projects.13
Indeed, the Metabolists’ urban ideas were only
realized, somewhat symbolically, in a small number
of building projects, such as Tange’s Yamanashi
Press and Broadcasting Center built in 1967 and
Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower. Nevertheless,
Banham recognized that through the Metabolist

5. Kisho Kurokawa, Takara Beautilion, 1970 (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
projects and the Metabolist manifesto,
megastructure had become an important tool to
‘‘make a unique Japanese contribution to modern
architecture’’ and led Japanese architecture to a
higher degree of maturity and independence of
other cultures’ ‘‘neo-colonialist’’ views by exploiting
new construction technologies.14
Design and Construction of the Nakagin
Capsule Tower
Banham does not mention particular examples of
the innovation in construction technologies he
found praiseworthy in the work of the Metabolists.
However, the development of advanced
prefabrication construction techniques, such as the
capsule technology used in Kurokawa’s Nagakin
Capsule Tower, would have been known to him.
Kurokawa began his exploration of capsule
architecture at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka
through the design of the Takara Beautilion, which
became one of the most popular architectural
fantasies at the Expo (Figure 5). The building
consisted of a three-dimensional framework of
steel pipes and a number of prefabricated cubic
capsules clad in stainless steel and installed in the
framework with connectors. The capsules housed
displays of the Takara Corporation’s beauty
products. The framework terminated at opened
joints, giving the building an unusual silhouette
and suggesting the incompleteness and
expandability of the structure. Kurokawa took full
advantage of the technology of prefabrication,
making possible instant assembly of the
structure and installation of capsules. In fact, the
Takara Beautilion was put together on site in only
six days.
The Takara Beautilion, along with most other
structures at Osaka Expo, was demolished after the
end of the event, but the Expo effect lingered.
Torizo Watanabe, then president of the real estate
firm Nakagin Co., visited Osaka Expo and was so
impressed by the Takara Beautilion that he decided
to retain the architect to design a capsule building
for permanent use. Watanabe conceived of this
development not as a conventional condominium
but rather a new form of work ⁄ live space for urban
dwellers. A specific sale policy was implemented
to target small or medium business owners and
high-level employees who already owned a house or
apartment and wanted a space in Tokyo’s center city
as a studio or for occasional overnight stays.
Kurokawa also claimed that: ‘‘The Capsules are
housing for homo movens: people on the move.’’15
His design responded to the emergence of ‘‘urban
nomads’’ and the increasing mobility characterizing
an emerging global city. The location of the Nakagin
Building at bustling Giza central business district
made it suitable for this purpose (Figure 6).16
This idea of impermanence and movability
originating in Metabolism’s concept of the city
influenced every step of the design and
construction of Nakagin Capsule Tower. According
to their different ‘‘metabolic cycles,’’ Kurokawa
configured the building with three basic
components: the permanent structure
(two ferroconcrete shafts), the moveable elements
(144 capsules), and the service equipment
(utilities). Their designed were based on different
life spans. Kurokawa envisioned that the main
shafts would last at least sixty years, while the
capsules would be due for replacement in twenty-
five to thirty-five years. He noted that the life span
of the capsule was not a mechanical one, but rather
a social one, implying that changing human needs
and social relationships would necessitate such
periodic replacement.17 The towers, containing
circulation and service spaces, are connected to
Nakagin Capsule Tower 18

6. Model of Nakagin Capsule Tower indicating possibility of expansion (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
7. Typical plan of Nakagin Capsule Tower (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
each other via outdoor bridges every three floors
and serve as vertical ‘‘artificial land,’’ upon which
capsules are installed. The utility pipelines are
attached to the outside of the capsules. The towers
rise to different heights, and the capsules are
arranged in a seemingly random pattern, suggesting
an ongoing process: the shaft could grow and more
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capsules could be piled up. Kurokawa regarded this
incomplete look as the ‘‘esthetic of time,’’ referring
to Metabolism’s central notion of the city as process
(Figures 7 and 8).18
Each capsule is tied to one of the concrete
cores with only four high-tension bolts: two each on
the upper and lower sides. That means that every
unit is removable and, by updating the capsules, the
whole system would be renewed. The capsule
measures 7.5 · 12.5 · 7 foot and is built of a
lightweight, welded steel frame—identical to a
shipping container in structure and size—and
covered with galvanized rib-reinforced steel panels
finished with a coat of Kenitex glossy spray. There is
a Plexiglas porthole window on each capsule, 4¼
foot in diameter. Because of the capsule’s distinct
form, Charles Jencks jokingly described the building
as ‘‘super-imposed washing machines’’ (Figures 9
and 10).19
The interior of the capsule was also designed
using industrial technologies. A variety of
installations were built into an extremely compact
space: an integrated bathroom unit at a corner, a
bed underneath the window, and appliances and
cabinets along the other wall including a color
television set, a refrigerator, a kitchen stove, an air
conditioner, a telephone, a stereo, an air cleaner, a
table light, a clock, and a desk calculator. The aim
was to provide basic space and outfitting to support
the lifestyle of a modern urban person in the city.
When the capsules were sold in 1972, their prices
ranged from $12,300 to $14,600, about the cost of
a luxury car of the time.20
Construction took place in separate locations,
both on-site and off-site. The only on-site
construction was the two towers and space for
utilities and equipment. Capsules were prefabricated
and assembled in another city by a manufacturer
that produced railroad vehicles and vessels. After
transport to the building site, they were hoisted by
crane and fastened to the concrete shafts starting
from the bottom up. Each capsule was installed
independently and cantilevered from the shaft so
that it could be removed without affecting others.
The construction of the entire Nakagin Capsule
Tower took only a year (Figures 11 and 12).
Saving the Future of the Recent Past
When Nakagin Capsule Tower was unveiled in 1972,
Japan Architect dedicated the entire October 1972
8. Section of Nakagin Capsule Tower (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).

issue to capsule architecture, featuring Kurokawa’s

building, discussing its potential impact, and
projecting an optimistic future for capsule
architecture. As the world’s first fully built capsule
building, Nakagin Capsule Tower introduced a
number of revolutionary ideas in design. It helped
establish a new building type, the capsule hotel,
that provided a compact and efficient
accommodation unique to Japanese cities.
Furthermore, some portions of the design of
Nakagin Capsule Tower later made their way into
industrial products, such as the prefabricated
integrated bathroom. Kurokawa envisioned the
capsule building as a new prototype for
prefabricated housing that would unleash the power
of mass production in urban settings. However, this
vision was not realized because of the high costs of
the innovative construction and the small,
standardized units that only accommodated the
needs of a single person. In the thirty-nine years
since its construction, Nakagin Capsule Tower
became more or less a monolithic and static icon in
the midst of the bustling and fast changing Giza
district, commemorating the ideal of a metabolic
city but no longer participating in its processes
(Figure 13).
Kurokawa designed the capsules to have a
twenty-five to thirty-five year lifespan. Ironically,
contemporary cities like Tokyo are growing and
transforming so rapidly that their change outpaces
the generational ‘‘metabolism’’ envisioned by the
Metabolists, and change at this pace operates on
the scale of the entire building instead of
components, such as the capsules. Hence, the plan
to demolish the Capsule Tower—and it is not an
isolated case. In fact, a few famous Metabolist
buildings have been torn down in the last decade
even though they were still in sound condition. In
2006, Kurokawa lost his Sony Tower, Nakagin
Capsule Tower’s sister building in Osaka. Kikutake’s
Sofitel Tokyo, a 1994 building characterized by a
dynamic form emblematic of the architect’s concept
of ‘‘Tree-shaped Community,’’ was torn down in

Nakagin Capsule Tower 20


9. Axonometric of a Capsule (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
2007 after only thirteen years of service
(Figure 14). Going back a little further, Tange’s
iconic Tokyo City Hall in Marunouchi district,
completed in 1957, was demolished in 1992 to
make room for Rafael Viñoly’s Tokyo International
Forum after a new city hall—also by Tange—had
been erected in Shinjuku in 1991.
Extremely high land costs in major Japanese
cities and the constant desire to maximize land
value have driven the decisions to tear down each
of these examples of the Metabolist legacy.
According to historian Botand Bognar, the average
construction cost of a building in a large city in
Japan accounts for only about 10 percent of the
land on which it sits; this results in more
renovations and redevelopments in Japan than in
most other nations.21 Landmark buildings
designed by renowned architects are no exception.
The Metabolist buildings were hit particularly hard
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because, paradoxically, the rigorous
megastructure-capsule distinctions offer little
flexibility in terms of occupancy and structural
expansion. In addition, because the Metabolist
architects expressed each capsule on the façade
to represent the individuality of their occupants,
the floor ⁄ area ratios of Metabolist buildings are
often below average, making them less
economically viable. In fact, the new fourteen-
story building being proposed to replace Nakagin
Capsule Tower would generate 60 percent more
square footage.
Anticipating the necessity of renewal and
upgrade of the capsules after thirty years of use,
Kisho Kurokawa Architects & Associates has been
working on a ‘‘Nakagin Capsule Tower Renovation
Plan’’ since 1998. The plan proposes updating
service equipment and replacing capsules with new
units while keeping the structural shafts intact
(Figures 15 and 16). By so doing, the building
would undergo self-renewal as the architect
originally envisioned. Measured at around 14 by 9
and 8 foot in height, the new capsule would be
slightly larger than the existing one, and it would no
longer include built-in furnishing, except a
prefabricated bathroom. Kurokawa argued that
replacing the capsules would be more cost-efficient
than tearing down the tower and building a new
one. The property owners’ association, however,
remained unconvinced and has continued to pursue
a complete redevelopment.
When the property owners’ redevelopment
plan was made public in 2007, Kurokawa launched
a campaign to save the Tower in the last year of
his life.22 He argued forcefully against the
demolition plan and implied a conspiracy by citing
the involvement of some American hedge fund in
this redevelopment. His interviews were widely
disseminated through both traditional media and
Internet blogs, and he appealed directly to various
architectural communities. Several major
architectural organizations in Japan, including the
Japan Institute of Architects, the Japan Federation
of Architects and Building Engineers Associations,
and DoCoMoMo Japan, unanimously endorsed
Kurokawa’s plan to protect the building and his
renovation proposal.23 Kurokawa also received
enormous support from the international
community of architects and designers. According
to a poll of over 10,000 architects from a hundred
countries by London-based World Architecture
News, 95 percent voted to preserve the building
and 75 percent voted to support Kurokawa’s idea
of replacing the capsules.24 The overwhelming
support from the profession indicates a general
acknowledgment of Nakagin Capsule Tower as an
architectural artifact with valuable cultural
heritage.
Architects contributing to the polls of World
Architecture News were excited about the idea of
replacing the Nakagin Building’s capsules, which,
for them, could test ‘‘what is possible with
10. Kurokawa in a Capsule (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).

modularization.’’25 The growing interest in the

design of this building and other works by the
Metabolists was also manifested in a few
high-profiled exhibitions and art reviews. The
exhibition called ‘‘Home Delivery: Fabricating the
Modern Dwelling’’ at the Museum of Modern Art in
2008 included a model of the Capsule Tower and
praised it as ‘‘representing the whole world of
architectural thoughts in the 1960s from the
Metabolist group in Japan.’’26 The New York Times
architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff summed up its
significance after visiting the building: ‘‘The Capsule
Tower is not only gorgeous architecture; like all
great buildings, it is the crystallization of a far-
reaching cultural ideal. Its existence also stands as a
powerful reminder of paths not taken, of the
possibility of worlds shaped by different sets of
values.’’27
The widespread and vocal support for
preserving the Nakagin Building aligns with a
notable shift in architectural history and criticism.
Opinions regarding architectural avant-gardes of the
1960s, including Team 10, Archigram, Super Studio,
Yona Friedman, and Metabolism, have changed
considerably if subtly in recent years.
Megastructural projects arising from these avant-
garde movements were often dismissed in the past
as technological fantasies and politically naïve ideas
about social progress, or, more critically, as
authoritarian gestures to control the development
of architecture and society with a fixed set of urban
design concepts executed at an inhuman scale.
Recent historic accounts situate these architectural
and urban experiments back in their respective
historic contexts and view these radical ideas and
projects more as alternatives to rigid mainstream
modernism on the one hand and nostalgic
postmodernism and New Urbanism on the other.28
The renewed interest in the Metabolist movement
and the effort to preserve Nagakin Capsule Tower
prompt us to re-examine the legacies of this
movement and what they mean to contemporary
practices of design and conservation.

Nakagin Capsule Tower 22


11. Building the frame of a capsule (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
Continuity through Transformation: A New
Attitude toward Historic Preservation
The drastically different opinions of the
architectural professionals and the property owners
regarding the Nakagin Capsule Tower’s future
reflect a profound conflict between the values of a
cultural elite and the logics of local market
economies. The Tokyo real estate market and
Japanese urban culture have intensified this
conflict and created distinct conservation practices.
For instance, because of the financial disadvantage
of keeping a historic building on its original site as a
physical archive, some valuable historic structures in
Japan have been relocated to remote sites to create
open-air architectural museums. Meiji Village is one
such open-air museum. Located about fifteen miles
outside Nagoya, Meiji Village has gathered
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over sixty historic buildings from Japan’s Meiji
(1868–1912), Taisho (1912–1926), and early Showa
(1926–1945) periods, which are rearranged in a
landscaped setting. Among these buildings is the
lobby of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel. No
plan for this kind of open-air museum, however, has
been developed for the conservation of post-WWII
modern architecture.
Also notable is the relative silence of the public
agents in the heated debate regarding the future of
the tower. Although the Japanese government and
the UNESCO World Heritage can intervene to save a
modern building, no government agency or NGO
has taken action to date.29 Japan has been known
for its great system of National Treasures and
Important Cultural Properties, which manifests the
nation’s dedication to preserving cultural artifacts.30
While one could speculate that a failure to
understand the historic value of Kurokawa’s building
could influence the government’s indifference to its
conservation, a more likely explanation for the lack
of official interest lies in the character of modern
Japanese cities and in the Japanese understanding
of cultural heritage. Japanese cities like Tokyo are
notorious for their extraordinary pace of change. As
John Thackara observed, ‘‘[In Japan] buildings are
designed in the expectation not that they will stand
the test of time but that they will be torn down
sooner rather than later and replaced by something
more appropriate to the economic and technological
demands of the future.’’31 As a result, Tokyo
remains a ‘‘brand new’’ city: most of its buildings
were built or rebuilt after World War II and,
according to the statistics, it continues to replace
roughly 30 percent of its structures every ten
years.32
Contributing to this attitude toward historical
preservation is an acceptance of constant
transformation of the physical environment, which
has been absorbed into Japanese consciousness.
Japanese culture has evolved with this notion of
impermanence. This notion has been represented in
its ultimate form through an extraordinary practice
of periodic reconstruction of Ise Shrine. Every
twenty years, the main sanctuary of this Shinto
shrine is torn down and a new one is built on an
immediately adjacent site in an almost identical
form. This ritual reconstruction, known as shikinen-
zokan, was initiated over one thousand three
hundred years ago to express the deepest ideas of
Shintoism, a faith in the necessity of periodic
renewal following the law of Nature.33 The historic
continuity is paradoxically preserved through such
symbolic rebuilding, which celebrates the idea of
transformation and regeneration.
The awareness of a paradoxical relationship
between transformation and continuity influenced
the Metabolists as well as other Japanese architects.
This particular Japanese context is manifest in a
book on Ise written by Tange and Kawazoe in 1962
12. Construction of Nakagin Capsule Tower (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).

Nakagin Capsule Tower 24


13. Elevations of Nakagin Capsule Tower (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
entitled Ise: Prototype of Japanese Architecture,
which called for reinterpretation of Ise’s traditional
principle in modern design. Responding to the
contemporary urban conditions characterized by
rapid expansion and unpredictable change, the
Metabolists moved away from the Modernist
approach to planning. Rather than providing a
Modernist machinic layout of the city’s
development, the Metabolists called for patterns
‘‘which can be followed consistently from present
into the distant future.’’34 In fact, when the biologic
concept of ‘‘metabolism’’ was introduced to Japan,
it was translated as shinchin taisha. This Japanese
phrase not only carries the physiologic meaning that
it has in English but also embodies the idiomatic
meaning of ‘‘out with the old, in with the new’’ in
the Chinese and Japanese languages. It refers to a
broader sense of transformation not only related to
animals or human bodies but also associated with
the world at large. Therefore, it is not surprising that
25 LIN
the architects chose this term as their manifesto,
because from their point of view, architecture and
city could only be sustained through constant
renewal—a process, they believed, as important as
metabolism to an organism.
The same notion of continuity through
transformation influences the Japanese attitude
toward historic conservation. As historian Nyozekan
Hasegawa argues, the importance of tradition in
Japan ‘‘lies not so much in preserving the cultural
properties of the past as in giving shape to
contemporary culture; not in the retention of things
as they were, but in the way certain … qualities
inherent in them live on in the contemporary
culture.’’35 Kurokawa’s proposal to preserve the
Nakagin Capsule Tower speaks to this attitude.
Through the replacement of capsules, the architect
challenges the prevalent Western concept of heritage
founded on an understanding of the monument as
permanent object fixed in time and specific to site.
Should Kurokawa’s renovation plan be carried out
and the capsules be replaced, it no longer would be
‘historic’ in the Western sense, as it would no longer
be original. In Japan, however, this transformation of
the Tower would conform to an understanding of
heritage based on the belief that eternity is
sustained by change.
Three Metabolist Urban Paradigms
While most Metabolist projects adopted a
megastructural strategy, two alternative paradigms
of urban design also arose within the Metabolist
movement: Fumihiko Maki’s idea of ‘‘group form’’
and Arata Isozaki’s concept of ‘‘ruins.’’ Sharing the
notion of the city as process instead of artifact, the
ideas of megastructure, group form, and ruins all
address Japan’s constantly changing urban
environment from different perspectives, and each
has had an impact on contemporary urbanism.
With another Metabolist Masato Otaka, Maki
introduced the concept of ‘‘group form’’ in the
essay ‘‘Towards the Group Form’’ published in the
Metabolist manifesto. Maki was critical of the
utopian idea of megastructure and proposed group
form as an alternative, which he defined more
coherently in his Investigations in Collective Form
published in 1964.36 In contrast to megastructure’s
hierarchical organization prioritizing the major
structure over individual units, Maki suggested that
order should arise from grouping individual
elements together. Such order is based on the
relationship between part and whole as often seen
in the formation of vernacular settlements like
Italian hill towns, North African villages, and
Japanese linear villages: individual units are
generative elements defined by a prototype, which
determines the general character of the ensemble.
Group form allows the ensemble to grow and renew
itself without affecting its general character as the
system maintains a dynamic equilibrium. The
emphasis of design therefore shifts from a physical
structure to a perceptual order underlying the
evolution of the city.

14. Kiyonori Kikutake, Softitel Tokyo, completed 1994, demolished 2007 (Photo by author).
Maki contended that group form would create
a flexible urban system more responsive to the
fluctuating conditions of contemporary society.
In contrast to conventional top-down planning,
group form encourages cumulative growth that
results in a non-hierarchical collective image. The
Hillside Terrace, arguably the most engaging urban
project in Maki’s career, provides a remarkable
example of this idea (Figure 17). Commissioned by
the Asakura family, the project is in fact a series
consisting of mixed residential, commercial, and
cultural uses that stretch along Kyu-Yamate Avenue
in Tokyo’s Daikanyama district. Since the design of
the first increment in 1967, the project continued to
grow for thirty years, progressing through seven
stages.37 Each stage of the development emerged
from the pattern set by previous designs but
distinguished itself by reflecting revisions of
planning regulations, developments of technology,
changing consciousness of the architect, and the
shifting character of the urban context as
Daikanyama evolved from a quiet residential area
to a bustling commercial district. Hillside Terrace
thus constitutes ‘‘group form at its most dynamic,
growing and evolving organically over time.’’38 An
open system with a certain degree of ambiguity, the
ensemble responds to uncertainty and celebrates
the aesthetic of transformation. As the project
grows, group form is able to accommodate new
additions and changes, but each stage remains
complete in its own form. In Maki’s point of view,
such a cumulative townscape has become the
essential character of Tokyo and suggests a new
urbanity for the contemporary city.
Isozaki’s concept of ‘‘ruins,’’ a more radical
Metabolist response to Japanese culture and urban
context, referred to the state of a city after a
catastrophe. Isozaki did not become a formal
member of the Metabolist group, but he was a
proponent of the Metabolist ideas and a frequent
collaborator of Tange and the Metabolists. Although
Isozaki shared the Metabolists’ enthusiasm for
megastructural form and futurist technology, he
disagreed with their optimistic views that the
development of a city is a continuous process and
that urban growth and transformation are more or
less predictable and thus can be planned,
structured, and controlled. On the contrary, Isozaki
contended that sudden catastrophic ruptures could
occur in the development of urban society. He first
presented this idea of ruins in a photomontage
entitled ‘‘Incubation Process’’ in 1962, included in
an exhibition featuring the Metabolists
(Figure 18).39 The montage was characterized by
his 1960 Joint-Core System project, with the image
of this futuristic city superimposed on a picture of
classical ruins. Fragments of giant Doric orders were
Nakagin Capsule Tower 26

15. Kisho Kurokawa, New capsule proposed for Nakagin Capsule Tower, 2006 (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
recycled and became the base of a cluster of
megastructures anchored by a strip of urban
freeway. Through this montage, Isozaki argued that
metamorphosis would be both destructive and
constructive, and as a result, human society would
repeatedly cycle between city and ruins: ‘‘In the
incubation process, ruins are the future state of our
city, and the future city itself will be ruins.’’40
Representing an ironic and somewhat pessimistic
attitude toward the modern city, Isozaki’s concept
of city ⁄ ruins has proven to be prophetic. It is
particularly telling when we are confronted with the
possible destruction of Nakagin Capsule Tower and
other Metabolist buildings. Moreover, the recent
great earthquake, tsunami, and resulting nuclear
meltdown in Fukushima, Japan in March 2011, with
its severe impact on Tokyo’s infrastructure, indicated
how vulnerable the contemporary city is in the face
of natural or man-made disasters. Ruins stand as
the counter state of a city and continue to remind
us of the destructive forces existing within it.
The three Metabolist paradigms—
megastructure, group form, and ruins—have
provoked substantial resonance as well as ample
criticism since they were conceptualized in the
1960s. A complete account of the influence of
these paradigms is outside of the scope of this
article. However, I would like to place each
paradigm in a wider context and summarize their
27 LIN
distinct impacts in the interest of situating the
particular legacy of the Nakagin Capsule Tower.
Kenzo Tange’s spectacular Tokyo Bay Plan
aroused a new wave of excitement of ‘‘Make no
small plans,’’ as much as Daniel Burnham’s Plan of
Chicago in 1909 and Le Corbusier’s Ville
Contemporaine in 1922. Radical concepts of
megastructure, such as plug-in, spatial city,
mobility, system and capsule, were widely circulated
among visionary architects, including Yona
Friedman, Moshe Safdie, Paul Rudolph, and
Archigram members such as Peter Cook and
Ron Herron. Numerous speculative projects in
the 1960s showed that the Metabolists and
Western avant-garde architects influenced each
other. Most of these projects, however powerful
and provocative, remained fantasies. Hampered
by technical limitations, even the few built works,
such as Safdie’s Habitat ‘67 and Tange’s Yamanashi
Press and Broadcasting Center, turned out to be
rather clumsy and inflexible. They fell short of their
promise to bring new ideas to the mass market and
failed to influence conventional architectural
practice.
Architectural critics and social activists reacted
to the authoritarian implications of megastructure.
In an article published in Architectural Design in
1964, Peter Smithson attacked Tange’s Tokyo Bay
Plan not only for its impracticality and the cost of
its rigid spatial organization and circulation
system—he claimed that the gigantic interlocking
loop highway system was redundant—but also for
the political implications of this hierarchical form.
He wrote: ‘‘Whatever may be explained, it is, above
all, centralized, absolutist, authoritarian . . .
somehow it has crept in at all levels—into its basic
thinking, into its organization, and residually, into
its imagery—for only the natural sensitivity of its
designers has taken the hard edge off its
ruthlessness.’’41 This overwhelming sense of order
described by Smithson is one of the reasons that
megastructural plans, when attempts were made to
realize them, often caused social disturbance and
anxiety. In a case much like Paul Rudolph’s Lower
Manhattan Expressway, Tange’s 1966 plan for Yerba
Buena Gardens in San Francisco encountered strong
resistance by local resident associations and activists
and was eventually abandoned.42
It was not until the 1980s that such large-scale
megaprojects with less ambitious social agendas
and more flexible layouts were reintroduced in a
number of regions in the world. Many of them
emerged during Japan’s ‘‘Bubble Economy’’ in the
eighties and involved massive reclamations on
Tokyo Bay, such as Tokyo Teleport Town and
Yokohama Minato Mirai 21 (Figure 19).43
Metabolism’s model of urban process, compelling
imagery of large-scale urban interventions, and
strategies for enabling for growth at a massive scale
were evident in many of these projects.
Maki’s idea of group form, although it never
became a dominant model of design, has remained
profoundly influential in practice. Giving priority to
individual elements over the system and a sensory
order over a material one, the concept of group
form found much in common with Dutch
Structuralism led by Aldo van Eyck, one of the
Team 10 members. Both Maki and van Eyck were
inspired by vernacular human settlements and tried
to transform their informal order into contemporary
urbanism by establishing a reciprocal relationship
between part and whole, small and large, and house
16. Kisho Kurokawa, Phasing Plan of Nakagin Capsule Tower Renovation, 2006 (Photo courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates).
and city.44 Van Eyck’s Amsterdam Orphanage and
Hermann Hertzberger’s Central Beheer are two
buildings emblematic of this reciprocal relationship
across scales as a defining tactic of a group form
design strategy. Maki’s theory also contributed to a
new contextual and situational attitude toward
architecture and city, which arose in Japan and the
West during the 1970s and crystallized in Colin
Rowe and Fred Koetter’s Collage City.45 Instead of
imposing a comprehensive framework to regulate
urban expansion and transformation, group form
called for recognizing and respecting preexisting
urban texture and stressed a city’s inherent process
of natural renewal as a template for new design
interventions.
Finally, Isozaki’s concept of ruins provided a
polemical metaphor critical of the progressive
ambition and faith in technology that had by then
dominated the modernist approach to architecture.
Based on this idea, Isozaki’s late work like Tsukuba
Science City of 1983 tended to engage history in a
paradoxical manner and was shaped by a serene
melancholy of decay and death. The metaphoric
representation of ruins inspired iconoclastic
architects throughout the world. In particular,
Isozaki’s discourse played an important part in the
development of postmodernism in the 1970s and
1980s. Although these historical metaphors and
references helped Isozaki and the postmodernists
break the predicament of postwar modernism, it
soon turned into a straightjacket itself, with a
narrow focus on the formal narrative of
architecture. Nevertheless, on the urban scale, the
idea of ruins continues to remind architects of the
ephemeral character of the contemporary city and
reinforces a contemporary understanding of the
city as a process or event rather than a collection
of artifacts. Current interest in the
‘‘dematerialized’’ as a response to the growing
influence of new electronic and digital technologies
seeks to melt the boundary between the real and
the virtual in much the same manner as Isozaki’s
1962 montage.46
Conclusion: the Legacy of the Nagakin
Capsule Tower
For the most part, Metabolist theory does not play
a prominent role in architectural discourse
nowadays. However, the dynamics engaged by the
Metabolist urban paradigms are still profoundly
influential in the transformation of contemporary
cities. Their impact is demonstrated in the urban
landscapes of many Asian cities like Tokyo and
Shanghai, which are shaped by the various agendas
Nakagin Capsule Tower 28
17. Fumihiko Maki, Hillside Terrace, Tokyo, 1967–1997 (Axonometric. Photo courtesy of Maki & Associates).
of public agents, planners, architects, and local
residents and organizations, as well as the flow of
capital and pressures of globalization. These cities
can hardly be identified as coherent entities. They
are often characterized by a juxtaposition of
different patterns of urban intervention such as
super-block projects, giant office towers,
labyrinthine traditional neighborhoods, shopping
streets, and ghettos of minorities or migrant
workers. The cities often appear chaotic, but such
chaos often embodies a sophisticated and dynamic
order as these immense urban complexes
continuously transform and regenerate—like an
organism.47 In this sense, ‘‘metabolism’’ remains a
provocative term to describe the current urban
condition, especially when its Japanese meaning
‘‘out with the old, in with the new’’ is considered.
The Nakagin Capsule Tower proves to be a prime
example of such dynamism, tensions, and options
facing Japanese cities.
29 LIN
To a great extent, the crisis of the Nakagin
Capsule Tower was created by these forces of urban
regeneration, which has previously led to the
demolition of Tange’s old Tokyo City Hall,
Kikutake’s Sofitel Tokyo, and Kurokawa’s Sony
Tower in Osaka. Economic globalization has
accelerated the pace of urban change in Asian
megacities, and repeated destruction and
construction has become part of the everyday
urban landscape, which to a certain extent
resembles Isozaki’s prophetic imagery of
metamorphosis between a city and ruins. Indeed,
the immediate context of Nakagin Capsule Tower
has changed dramatically since it was built in 1972,
with many parcels updated in the last decade.
Under such development pressure, an innovative
approach to conservation has to be sought,
because neither the Western approach to
preservation with its desire for stasis nor the
typically Japanese solution of a complete relocation
is feasible. At this moment, the Tower remains,
having withstood the severe earthquake of March
2011. Its development plans are on hold as a
consequence of the global recession, but its future
remains uncertain.
The Nakagin Capsule Tower represents a
significant historical moment in postwar
architecture. Its design embodies the Metabolists’
urban and social ideals: a city of mobility and
flexibility, and a system adapted to the needs of a
fast-paced, constantly changing society. The
building celebrates the idea of interchangeability
and flexibility through the capsule, and its history
reflects the rise and fall of Metabolism’s
technological utopias and the transformation of
Japan’s urban culture since the early 1970s. The
Tower thus stands as a living fossil offering a
comprehensive lesson in the success and failure of
postwar avant-gardes. A flawed yet compelling
prototype, it was designed and built in response to
18. Arata Isozaki, Incubation Process, 1962. Photomontage (Photo courtesy of Arata Isozaki Atelier).

the emergence of a modern megacity and the rapid

transformation of a technological society. It has
become a bridge connecting the urban visions of
the postwar avant-gardes to contemporary
architectural culture.
However, the value of Nakagin Capsule
Tower goes beyond its historic role as an
alternative to the static paradigms of modernist
architecture and urbanism. The building, and the
Metabolist movement it represents, has affinities
to issues that shape our present and future. The
Metabolist urban paradigmns—Megastructure’s
technological optimism, the iterative flexibility of
group form, and Isozaki’s ephemeral
ruins—emphasized the necessity of cultivating
new relationships between form, technology, and
urban life in a manner that moves across scale to
link architecture and urban design. These
Metabolist urbanisms represented a body of
powerful and original ideals that continue to
stimulate bold visions of the contemporary city.
Concepts such as ‘‘metabolic city,’’ ‘‘artificial
terrain,’’ ‘‘marine city,’’ ‘‘living cell,’’ ‘‘capsule,’’
and ‘‘group form’’ have been appropriated by
contemporary architects addressing the massive
urban transformations and the global climate
change of the twenty-first century.48 In this
sense, Metabolism invented a new sensibility for
contemporary architectural culture. Therefore, the
preservation of the Nakagin Capsule Tower is
about more than the rescue of a historic artifact
or an indulgence in utopian nostalgia. Rather, the
building is emblematic of a prophetic vision of
the contemporary city and its processes, and this
represents its most compelling legacy.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the editors of the
JAE and the anonymous referees, who provided
valuable comments to improve this paper. Professor
Thordis Arrhenius also provided inputs to an earlier
version of this paper.

Nakagin Capsule Tower 30


19. Kenge Tange, Fuji TV Headquarters, Tokyo Teleport, 1997 (Photo by author).
Notes
1. Yuki Solomon, ‘‘Kurokawa’s Capsule Tower to Be Razed,’’
Architectural Record 195, no. 6 (June 2007): 34. The report first
appeared on http://archrecord.construction.com on April 30, 2007.
2. The building withstood the recent earthquake on March 11, 2011.
However, there is always concern that the Tower would not survive a
stronger earthquake closer to Tokyo.
3. Details of the proposed design were not revealed. The project was
currently put on hold because of the lack of available financing after the
worldwide economic recession in 2008.
4. Günter Nitschke, ‘‘Tokyo: ‘Olympic Planning’ versus ‘Dream
Planning’,’’ Architectural Design 34 (October 1964): 482–508; and ‘‘The
Metabolists of Japan,’’ Architectural Design 34 (October 1964): 509–24.
Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New
York: Harper & Row, 1976).
5. Banham, Megastructure, p. 9.
6. The RIBA named Archigram the Royal Gold Medalists in 2002. RIBA
president David Rock wrote about this decision: ‘‘Archigram is a
marvellously fitting choice for a Royal Gold Medal for the beginning of
the twenty-first century, with the message and mixture of enthusiasm,
optimism, debunking, imagination, harnessing awareness of the
boundary-breaking realities of the sciences and arts outside, or on the
edge of, architecture. While part of history, Archigram’s messages can be
interpreted for the future.’’
7. The recent publications on the megastructural movements include:
Peter Lang and William Menking, eds., Superstudio: Life Without Objects
(Milan: Skira, 2003); Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture without
Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Larry Busbea,
Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France, 1960–1970 (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2007); Hadas Steiner, Beyond Archigram: The Structure of
Circulation (London: Routledge, 2008); and Zhongjie Lin, Kenzo Tange
and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan
31 LIN
(London: Routledge, 2010). A book comprising of interviews with the
Metabolists and edited by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist is
forthcoming. In 2008, an exhibition entitled ‘‘Megastructure Reloaded’’
was held in Berlin. Heather Woofter curated an exhibition called
‘‘Metabolic Cities’’ at the Kemper Museum of Washington University in
St. Louis in 2009, featuring the works of Archigram, Metabolism, and
the Situationalist International. Another exhibition on Metabolism will
open at Mori Museum in Tokyo in 2011.
8. Kiyonori Kikutake et al., Metabolism: The Proposals for New
Urbanism (Tokyo: Bijutsu shupansha, 1960).
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. The National Capital Region Development Plan, published by
Tokyo Metropolitan Government in 1958, was inspired by Patrick
Abercrombie’s 1944 concept for London. It proposed creating a
green belt around Tokyo’s center city and a number of satellite
cities outside of the green belt to absorb Tokyo’s population growth
and industrial expansion. Tange counteracted this radiant plan with a
linear concept, envisioning a megastructural city extending from the
existing urban core across Tokyo Bay to reach Chiba prefecture on
the opposite side. For details see Zhongjie Lin, ‘‘Urban Structure for
the Expanding Metropolis: Kenzo Tange’s 1960 Plan for Tokyo,’’
Journal of Architectural & Planning Research 24, no. 2 (Summer
2007): 109–24.
11. In Japan, the 1970 Osaka Expo was regarded as a swan song of
megastructural projects. Architectural historian Wilhelm Klauser
observed that Tange’s mega-roof for the main pavilion at Osaka Expo,
which had elicited praise of many critics for its dimensions and its
concept of uniting peoples of the world under one roof, was later
viewed by Japanese architects as strangely dated because ‘‘its form had
evidently been inspired by those very chemical plants, refineries, and
shipping lines whose significance was rapidly declining after 1973.’’
Wilhelm Klauser, ‘‘Introduction: Rules and Identities,’’ in Christopher
Knabe and Joerg Rainer Noennig, eds., Shaking the Foundation:
Japanese Architects in Dialogue (Munich: Prestel, 1999), p. 12. Also
see Zhongjie Lin, ‘‘From Osaka to Shanghai: Forty Years of
Transformation of the World Expositions,’’ Time+Architecture, no. 1
(2011): 18–23.
12. Banham, Megastructure, p. 7.
13. Ibid., pp. 47, 57.
14. Ibid., p. 45.
15. Jin Hidaka, ‘‘Nakagin Capsule Tower Building’’ (Tokyo: International
Union of Architects 2011 Congress), Congress Circular, 2008.
16. In fact, a surprising number of professionals, including travel
agents, accountants, and architects, moved in after the building was
completed and used the capsules as their business spaces. Hiroshi
Watanabe, The Architecture of Tokyo (Stuttgart ⁄ London: Edition Axel
Menges, 2001), p. 148.
17. Noriaki Kurokawa, ‘‘Challenge to the Capsule: Nakagin Capsule
Tower Building,’’ Japan Architect 47 (October 1972): 17.
18. Ibid.
19. Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture
(London: Academy Editions, 1977), p. 40.
20. Watanabe, Architecture of Tokyo.
21. Botand Bognar, ‘‘What Goes Up, Must Come Down,’’ Harvard
Design Magazine 3 (Fall 1997): 35.
22. Kurokawa died of heart failure on October 12, 2007.
23. Kisho Kurokawa, ‘‘Recent Situation about Nakagin Capsule Tower,’’
Kisho Kurokawa’s website, May 30, 2006, http://www.kisho.co.jp
(accessed August 9, 2009).
24. ‘‘Nakagin Tower WAN Poll Result,’’ World Architecture News,
September 23, 2005, http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.
php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=162
(accessed August 9, 2009).
25. Ibid.
26. Audio representation of the exhibition ‘‘Home Delivery: Fabricating
the Modern Dwelling,’’ Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, July
20–October 20, 2008. The Pompidou Center also announced its plan to
prepare an exhibition on Japanese Architecture, and a real capsule from
Nakagin building, should it be demolished, would be featured at the
exhibition. Furthermore, a circular has been distributed by the Twenty-
fourth World Congress of Architecture (UIA), to be held in Tokyo in 2011,
calling for ‘‘reconsideration of the Metabolism Model.’’ Hidaka, ‘‘Nakagin
Capsule Tower.’’
27. Nicolai Ouroussoff, ‘‘Future Vision Banished to the Past,’’ New York
Times (July 6, 2009).
28. Several recent historic accounts have demonstrated this trend:
Steiner, Beyond Archigram; Busbea, Topologies; Sadler, Archigram; Lang
and Menking, Superstudio; Max Risselada and Dirk van den Heuvel eds.,
Team 10, 1953–1981: In Search of Utopia of the Present (Rotterdam:
NAi Publishers, 2006); and Cherie Wendelken, ‘‘Putting Metabolism
Back in Place: The Making of a Radically Decontextualized Architecture
in Japan,’’ in Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Rejean Legault, eds.,
Anxious Modernism: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 279–300.
29. DoCoMoMo Japan pleaded for the United Nations’ heritage arm to
protect Nakagin building, but it did not succeed. Hidaka, ‘‘Nakagin
Capsule Tower.’’
30. The Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties began being
enforced in Japan in 1950. As of 2009, there are 862 National Treasures
in the arts and crafts category and 210 in the structures category. In
addition, there are 9,435 Important Cultural Properties in the arts and
crafts category and 2,205 in the structures category. Database of
National Cultural Properties, http://www.bunka.go.jp/bsys/index.asp
(accessed August 9, 2009).
31. John Thackara, ‘‘In Tokyo They Shimmer, Chatter and Vanish,’’ The
Independent (London) (September 25, 1991): 12.
32. Bognar, ‘‘What Goes Up,’’ p. 35.
33. Ise Shrine’s ritualistic and performative rebuilding is said to have
started in 685 C.E. The period of rebuilding was a little in flux in the
past. In early times, it was nineteen years, and due to turmoil in the
middle ages, there occurred a complete interruption of more than one
hundred years. Later, it was officially set at twenty years. It is believed
that the period of around twenty years is predicated on the life span of
building. Some also say it may be the time needed for passing down the
necessary carpentry techniques. The last rebuilding happened in 1993,
the sixty-first on record. Arata Isozaki, Japan-ness in Architecture
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 131, 323.
34. Noboru Kawazoe, ‘‘City of the Future,’’ Zodiac 9 (1961): 100.
35. Nyozekan Hasegawa, The Japanese Character, trans. John Bestor
(Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1965), pp. 101–02.
36. Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Form (St Louis:
Washington University, 1964). This book introduces three prototypes of
collective urban forms: compositional form (referring to the conventional
method of composition based on a two-dimensional plane),
megastructure, and the group form. Investigations in Collective Form is
remarkable for a few reasons, first and foremost of which is its status as
the first written work to define the concept of megastructure (Maki’s
definition is used by Reyner Banham in his book), but the emphasis of
Maki’s book is on the group form.
37. The Hillside Terrace includes Hillside Stage I, 1967–1969; Hillside
Stage II, 1971–1973; Hillside Stage III, 1975–1977; Hillside Stage IV,
1985 (by Motokura Makoto, who previously worked in Maki’s office);
Hillside Stage V, 1987; Hillside Stage VI, 1992; and the Royal Danish
Embassy that was built in 1979 on one of the parcels originally owned
by the Asakura family, also designed by Maki. In 1998, Maki designed
Hillside West for a site only a short distance from Hillside Terrace. It
continued the rhythm of development of the preceding series. For
details, see Jennifer Taylor, The Architecture of Fumihiko Maki: Space,
City, Order and Making (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003), pp. 132–38.
38. Taylor, Maki, p. 26.
39. The notion of ‘‘ruins’’ was also presented in Isozaki’s short essay
written in 1962 entitled ‘‘The City Demolisher, Inc.,’’ taking the form of
a dialogue between ‘‘Arata’’ and ‘‘Shin.’’ The essay contrasted a passion
for city-design and a quasi-Dadaistic desire for city deconstruction.
Arata Isozaki, ‘‘The City Demolisher, Inc.,’’ Kukan he [Toward Space]
(Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1971), pp. 11–20.
40. Ibid.
41. Peter Smithson, ‘‘Reflections on Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Plan,’’
Architectural Design (October 1964): 479–80.
42. For a study of Kenzo Tange’s Yerba Buena project, see Kuang
Shi, Gary Hack, and Zhongjie Lin, Urban Design in the Global
Perspective (Beijing: China Architecture & Building Press, 2006), pp.
112–22.
43. The Metabolist architect Masato Otaka was the master planner of
Minato Misai 21. For a detailed discussion of current mega-projects in
the Tokyo Bay area, see Zhongjie Lin, ‘‘From Megastructure to
Megalopolis: Formation and Transformation of Mega-projects in Tokyo
Bay,’’ Journal of Urban Design 12 (February 2007): 73–92.
44. Van Eyck studied primitive dwelling forms in central Africa and
developed the theory of ‘‘configurative discipline,’’ suggesting that such
a reciprocal relationship between part and whole reinforces each of their
identities. Aldo van Eyck, ‘‘Steps toward a Configurative Discipline,’’
Forum 16, no. 3 (1962): 81–94.
45. Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1978).
46. Bognar observes that many recent designs are characterized by
‘‘lightness, surface, fragmentation, and dissolution,’’ as demonstrated in
concepts like Maki’s ‘‘cloud-like formations,’’ Toyo Ito’s ‘‘spaces of
flows,’’ and Shigeru Ban’s ‘‘paper architecture.’’ Bognar, ‘‘What Goes
Up,’’ p. 38.
47. Rem Koolhaas observed that in Tokyo, ‘‘chaos is not only well
documented and understood, but that it has already become an object
for consumption . . . There, where intelligence meets masochism, chaos
had rapidly become the dominant leitmotif of architecture and
urbanism.’’ Rem Koolhaas, ‘‘Urbanism after Innocence: Four Projects,’’
Assemblage 18 (August 1992): 94. In Maki’s view, the order of a city
could reside in the seemingly chaotic scenes; it was the task of planners
to reveal the order by providing a conceivable organization or, in Kevin
Lynch’s terminology, the imaginability of the city. Fumihiko Maki,
Movement Systems in the City (Cambridge: Graduate School of Design,
Harvard University, MA, 1965), p. 11.
48. One of such examples is the NOAH project for New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina, featuring an eco-friendly megastructure floating on
the Mississippi River to accommodate 20,000 residential units and
supporting facilities. Yuka Yoneda, ‘‘NOAH: Mammoth Pyramid Megacity
for New Orleans,’’ August 19, 2009, http://inhabitat.com/noah-
mammoth-pyramidal-arcology-designed-for-new-orleans/ (accessed
June 4, 2011).
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