The fate of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, one of the founders of the Metabolist movement, has sustained a strong following since the announcement of its proposed demolition in 2007. At first glance, it checks all the boxes of a futuristic and head-turning project that lures the attention of both architects and the general public.
Since it appeared on the streets of Chuo City, Tokyo in 1972, I can only imagine how many times this structure has been photographed and lauded at by visitors and passersby. The ongoing effort to preserve this building has been going on for fifteen years, yet after crowdfunding efforts, preservation pleas, and petitions, the iconic Tower that's dazzled us for years will be demolished today, on April 12, 2022.
When news broke of the Tower's official demolition in late March, media outlets quickly dispatched details on the matter. For many, like myself, news of its final demise wasn't a complete shock.
As much as I love and appreciate this Tower, one I hoped to visit someday, the cost to refurbish and maintain it wasn't a viable option for the group of real estate firms that acquired the building in 2021. According to CNN's Oscar Holland and Junko Ogura, owners of the capsules were contacted by the real estate group operating under the name "Capsule Tower Building" (CTB) to move out by March before the building's demolition in April.
In my previous coverage of the Nakagin Capsule Tower in May 2021, I go into a brief history of the Tower, its metabolism roots, the potential hope for saving, and an overview of what it's like to stay inside one of the Tower's module's thanks to a documentary entitled, "Living in the Long Forgotten Future," directed by Kevin Tadge. Fast forward to the present, the Tower's structural fate is sealed.
Take Tatsukuki Maeda, for example. A former owner of 15 capsules and a representative of the volunteer group Nakagin Capsule Tower Building Preservation and Regeneration Project, he expressed sadness and dismay to various media outlets who reached out to him for a comment on the building's destruction. "When I look up at the tower, all I can say is 'I'm sorry' for not being able to save it," he shared with Reed Stevenson of Bloomberg.
While I've been passively following the progress and crowdfunding initiatives to save the iconic Tower, one could say there was a brief glimmer of hope that it could be done. Volunteers like Maeda did what they could to help reverse the Tower's evident fate. According to reporting from CNN earlier this month, individuals behind the conservation campaign "asked city authorities to intervene -- and even considered applying for protected status with UNESCO. But neither approach proved successful." However, as I previously reported last year, the two-tower structure, consisting of 140 stacked modular units made of concrete and steel, suffered from severe corrosion and disrepair. Even with about 100 of these modular units used as residents or office/creative spaces, the time and cost for large-scale repairs proved it was now time to say goodbye. Like most preservation efforts, it often boils down to money and repair feasibility.
While news of the Tower has traveled quickly across the globe, many people seemed to be just learning about the infamous Tower and its unforgettable appearance over the past few weeks. If you search through social media, images of the Tower's iconic modular cubes and circular windows flood the screen. People have liked, retweeted, and commented on the building's significance for years. Its "out of this world" sci-fi look continued to allure young and old every year. Especially with its guest appearances in films, Kurokawa's Metabolist beauty will always "live on" in its own way.
Even with the structure frequently appearing in news publications, its recurring surge of interest by the community has propelled the public to "pay attention" to a now lost preservation battle that has been ongoing since 2007.
rip in peace to one of the weirdest little guys to ever do it https://t.co/CCS5ZChv64
— buildings being weird little guys (@weirdlilbldgs) April 11, 2022
Planning An ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ Type Of Thing To Steal The Nakagin Capsule Tower In The Middle Of The Night Before The Demolition Begins. DM If You Would Like To Be In On The Operation.
— The Hustle Architect (@VitruviusGrind) April 11, 2022
In true nature, social media's architecture community had something to say about the Tower's fate. Across various media outlets, many expressed their thoughts and paid homage to the Tower in their own way.
However, after scoping through various posts and tweets, this post shared the morning of April 11 caught my eye. While the building's physical presence was being demolished and some individual capsule units were being relocated to museums, a company named Gluon aims to save a digital copy of the Tower.
[3D Digital Archive Project]
メタボリズムの名建築『中銀カプセルタワービル』を3次元で記録に残すため、3Dデジタルアーカイブプロジェクトのクラウドファンディングがスタートしました！https://t.co/ryK9vEycrp#中銀カプセルタワービル #NakaginCapsuleTower #3DDA pic.twitter.com/LwcSbpR6Vq
— gluon (@gluon_tokyo) April 11, 2022
What fascinates me most about deteriorating architectural gems, like the Nakagin Capsule Tower, is the amount of fanfare and public engagement a project can garner. Maybe this is a testament to the time and age we live in, where technology fosters new possibilities for the industry. The way we view, experience, and remember a building isn't just a memory of the physical but digital as well.
After some digging, Gluon, a Japanese-based tech company, integrates 2D and 3D data with AR/VR implementation to "create new value centered on architecture and cities." According to Gluon's crowdfunding page on motion-gallery.com, they explain their project aims "to build a new preservation method and inherit the value of famous architecture as a digital archive by utilizing the 3D measurement technology cultivated in the digital description of space."
With a goal to raise 6,500,000 yen by August 8, 2022, who's to say this digital archiving goal can't be achieved? If Kurokawa were alive to see the work Gluon hopes to achieve, I wonder what he'd say?
it is quite sad that this building is finally coming down. It is weirdly positioned in the city - kind of hard to get to at the edge of Ginza, next to a very fast moving street and an elevated highway right beside that. Very much a place where cars have taken over and humans need to tread cautiously.
In a hyper capitalist city like Tokyo it is easy to do the math and see why it is worth more demolished than preserved. Metabolist buildings tend to waste a lot of rentable floor area. In this instance I can imagine the building might have had a business model as a funky airbnb, the uber-Tokyo destination. But that didnt happen and it was (willfully?) let to rot. The same thing was done to FLW's Imperial Hotel (or so I've been told). Maintenance was ignored so it could be shouted out that it was too far gone to repair - then torn down and replaced with an impressively generic building whose sole purpose seemed to be to produce more money making floor area. At least with Frank's building they moved the lobby to Meiji Mura so it can still be visited. With the Nakagin we only get to experience it in pieces, negating the cool aggregate experience that the building was designed for...
On the flip side there is something powerful in knowing Japan really does not play favorites in its endless churn of buildings. That is the context that allows for continuous experimentation and discovery, and it would not be anything like as interesting if the city worked any differently. Not the first to say this, I am sure, but it does confirm the theory that metabolism is based on. Only the scale was wrong. It is not the modules that are plug and play, its entire buildings.
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A recent post shared by the Nakagin Capsule Tower Building Preservation and Regeneration Project's Facebook page shows the status of the building after day 1 of demolition.
https://www.facebook.com/Nakag...
it is quite sad that this building is finally coming down. It is weirdly positioned in the city - kind of hard to get to at the edge of Ginza, next to a very fast moving street and an elevated highway right beside that. Very much a place where cars have taken over and humans need to tread cautiously.
In a hyper capitalist city like Tokyo it is easy to do the math and see why it is worth more demolished than preserved. Metabolist buildings tend to waste a lot of rentable floor area. In this instance I can imagine the building might have had a business model as a funky airbnb, the uber-Tokyo destination. But that didnt happen and it was (willfully?) let to rot. The same thing was done to FLW's Imperial Hotel (or so I've been told). Maintenance was ignored so it could be shouted out that it was too far gone to repair - then torn down and replaced with an impressively generic building whose sole purpose seemed to be to produce more money making floor area. At least with Frank's building they moved the lobby to Meiji Mura so it can still be visited. With the Nakagin we only get to experience it in pieces, negating the cool aggregate experience that the building was designed for...
On the flip side there is something powerful in knowing Japan really does not play favorites in its endless churn of buildings. That is the context that allows for continuous experimentation and discovery, and it would not be anything like as interesting if the city worked any differently. Not the first to say this, I am sure, but it does confirm the theory that metabolism is based on. Only the scale was wrong. It is not the modules that are plug and play, its entire buildings.
I am just sad I never got to visit.
yeah that is why it is truly sad. I was lucky enough to live in the city and visited it several times taking friends and visitors. So many wont have that chance and it was a building that represents a moment in time like no other. You can still go see the Shizuoka Newspaper building by Kenzo Tange though, just down the road. It is not as iconic but still pretty cool. Much of that era has been destroyed in recent years. The hotel in Ueno by Kiyonori Kikutake and the theatre in Ginza by the same architect both were destroyed since I moved to Tokyo 20 years ago. It is not only the Nakagin that is gone. Unfortunately the metabolists were not prolific enough to leave a lasting mark in a city like Tokyo...
The Nakagin Capsule Tower won.
There are now 100000 imitators going up right now.
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