In 1972, the people of Tokyo looked up to see something extraordinary looming in the center of the city. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie — a futuristic tower made up of 140 detachable capsules, each fit for a single resident and with a porthole looking out, like a bunch of eyes fixed on the city.
With its modular design and minimal aesthetic, the 13-story Nakagin Capsule Tower was a 20th-century design marvel intended to express a postwar Japanese theory of architecture as a living organism. Metabolism, explained architect Kisho Kurokawa, who designed the tower, envisioned cities and buildings with modular parts that could be attached and detached as needed, just as some organisms develop new parts.
“If you replace the capsules every 25 years, it could last 200 years,” Kurokawa said in an interview in 2007, the year he died. “It’s recyclable. I designed it as sustainable architecture.”
Each capsule measured eight by 13 feet and was attached to one of two central reinforced concrete towers. But over the years, many of them were abandoned and left to decay, and residents eventually decided to let the building die rather than save it. Lamenting its fate, the New York Times called Nakagin Tower an “architectural tragedy.”
After years of delays, the Nakagin Capsule Tower was dismantled in late 2022, its 140 prefabricated capsules pulled one by one from their sockets and discarded. Most were non-lifesaving. But 23 pods managed to survive – pieces without a puzzle.
Now, after some renovation, these orphaned capsules are starting an amazing second life, seeding new architectural ideas across Japan and the world, where they’re being turned into art spaces, museums and even holiday accommodations.
“Although we were unable to save the building, Kisho Kurokawa’s original idea of the capsules as interchangeable, movable elements gave us the impetus to preserve them,” said Tatsuyuki Maeda, a former Nakagin resident and now head of Nakagin Capsule Tower Building Preservation . and Renaissance Project.
Mr. Maeda, 56, fell in love with the tower when he first saw it as a boy, imagining it to be the basis for Japan’s superhero sci-fi franchise “Ultraman.” “I felt drawn to its unique exterior,” she said. “I wanted to look out of one of those round windows someday.”
Since the demolition, Mr. Maeda has asked wealthy people to buy the pods, but they are not for sale. Putting these Metabolist wrecks in the care of museums and commercial facilities was the best solution.
“The idea was that when a capsule got old, it would be replaced with a new one,” he said. “This meant that the capsule itself could be moved. By exhibiting capsules around the world, I want as many people as possible to understand this concept.”
All 23 have been reborn — asbestos removed, repaired and painted inside and out, and in some cases new furniture installed. Now they find a new purpose as messengers from a bygone era of design. An Osaka steel company mounted one on a trailer bed and displayed it at trade shows in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka to promote its design brand. Another capsule was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, which designed Kurokawa’s studio in 1990. Kurokawa’s capsule itself found its way to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
“It’s hard to find Metabolist blueprints available, so when we heard that the people of Nakagin Tower had failed in their attempt to restore the towers and it was going to be demolished, we decided to go see the demolition and the saved towers to begin. a conversation,” said Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA.
Erected on the edge of the upscale Ginza district, Kurokawa’s capsule tower has been redesigned with minimalist modern living in mind. Each capsule was large enough for a bed, wardrobe, workstation, bathroom and porthole window. Luxury versions were available with a built-in Sony stereo, cassette player, color TV and digital clock.
At first, the pods were aimed at busy salarymen looking for a pied-à-terre in the city center rather than a long drive. “This ‘capsule’ will provide a good living space and a secluded environment in which to select and evaluate business data,” an early sales brochure said, advertising features such as housekeepers, typewriters and calculators.
And more than a convenient place to stay, Nakagin was a living art installation — an expression of postwar Japanese philosophy that combines modern architecture with organic organic growth.
The Metabolist movement, Ms. Fletcher said, “emphasized proof of concept, light environmental footprint and early interest in biotechnology.”
But like many living bodies, Kurokawa’s tower faced unexpected ailments.
After its completion in 1972, all the units were sold and the building won critical acclaim. But second-generation owners who had inherited pods weren’t all that interested in using them, much less paying for replacements when the steel shells began to wear out. Capsules had to be removed for renewal, which was prohibitively expensive. Asbestos was another major problem. As the decades passed, many units corroded and netting was placed over the structure to prevent pieces from crashing onto the street below. The units were left empty or used for storage.
In 2018, a real estate company bought the land, along with some of the capsules, with plans for redevelopment. But the pandemic tainted those plans. Since the tower was now certain to be demolished, the preservationists agreed to pay part of the demolition costs to the real estate company in exchange for free transport of the 23 capsules.
Despite its untimely demise, the tower had become a symbol of Tokyo, attracting design enthusiasts from around the world. Although most of the owners decided to sell, Nakagin had developed a small community of residents. In place of the old wage earners, it attracted writers, architects, photographers and other creatives. They threw boozy parties, hosted celebrity guests (including Francis Ford Coppola and Keanu Reeves) and dreamed of saving the structure from the proverbial wrecking ball.
Takayuki Sekine bought two capsules in 2005 while he was director of a regional chamber of commerce. He spent weekends there for the next 15 years, always welcoming strange visitors.
“Everyone was very happy and enjoyed the unique space, with many saying it was their favorite building in the world,” said Mr Sekine, 61.
Shojiro Okuyama, 46, a journalist, bought a unit in 2016 in an effort to help save the building.
“We had maintenance work going on at the time, but it was still heartbreaking to see my own capsule disintegrate,” he said. “I was first drawn to it because of the architecture, but it was the community that I really fell in love with. I hope that preserved capsules can spread this sense of community across borders.”
The restored capsules now attract fans to Ginza, Tokyo’s upscale shopping and nightlife district. The Shochiku entertainment company, known for its Kabuki theater, has put two on permanent display. At a recent gathering in her purpose-built gallery, Wakana Nitta, a musician who goes by the name of Cosplay DJ Koe-chan, set up her turntables among the pods and began spinning tunes from anime shows and sci-fi movies.
A former resident, Ms. Nitta, now 44, meticulously documented the tower’s dismantling. At the recent event, her photos of cranes carrying capsules out of the structure were displayed on a capsule that had been stripped of its frame. the other, renovated, displayed images of her life in her own pod, gazing out her porthole at Tokyo.
“I felt like aliens had taken me on a spaceship,” he laughed. “With the cranes lifting them, the capsules finally flew into the sky like a UFO.”
Nakagin Tower also lives digitally. Architecture and design firm Gluon took more than 20,000 photos with drones and single-lens reflex cameras to map the entire building with civil engineering laser scanners. The result is a accurate 3D rendering of the structure, rust stains and all, which has been uploaded online for posterity.
For those who want the real experience, Mr. Maeda and his partners plan this year to open a seaside “capsule village” in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo. Five renovated Nakagin units will be located along the coast, their portholes facing the Pacific. The concept was inspired by a 1972 Kurokawa design described in a book exhibited at the only other place where you can sleep in one of his original pods: Capsule House K, the architect’s former cottage in the hills of Nagano Prefecture west of Tokyo . Now a $1,400-a-night Airbnb rental, it includes four capsules, built at the same time as those for Nakagin Tower, connected to a concrete core. Two are identical to the Nakagin units, one is a kitchen and one is a chashitsuor traditional Japanese teapot.
“He grew up in Aichi with a teapot in the backyard where he and his brothers would study and play hide and seek,” Kurokawa’s son Mikio Kurokawa, 58, said while showing a visitor the capsule on a recent afternoon. “It is said that a room of this size allows Japanese people to feel more relaxed.”
Back in Tokyo, the Ginza Six mall unveiled another Nakagin tribute: a mock-up of Nakagin Tower set in a rooftop ice rink, with a capsule repurposed as a retro music hall at a street-level entrance.
“How do people of today, living in the future, feel about the ‘1970s future ideas’ that the Nakagin building had, and how will they connect these ideas to our own future?” asked Yoshiro Nishi, a spokesman for YAR, a design studio that did the interior. “We will be delighted if this exhibition can serve as a bridge from the past to the present and further into the future.”
So far, 16 of the 23 rescued capsules have found new homes. As for Nakagin’s legacy, it lives on in several buildings: Kurokawa created the first capsule hotel, the Capsule Inn Osaka, which opened in 1979. Its units, stacked in two, were only a single layer wide, but the concept was adopted in cities across Japan and even exported. It was an early example of how modular architecture can inspire, now seen in everything from homes to airports.
“According to the concept of Metabolism, the tower would remain and the capsules would be discarded like old cells,” said Mikio Kurokawa. “The fact that due to the strong emotions of many people, some capsules have survived and been restored as new cells for new locations is perhaps even more interesting than Metabolism itself. Their architect would be pleased.”