Japan’s Landmark Capsules Coming Down to Sit in Museums

Demolition teams start to take down the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an iconic structure designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa and built in 1972, in Tokyo's Ginza district on April 12, 2022. (AP)
Demolition teams start to take down the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an iconic structure designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa and built in 1972, in Tokyo's Ginza district on April 12, 2022. (AP)
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Japan’s Landmark Capsules Coming Down to Sit in Museums

Demolition teams start to take down the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an iconic structure designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa and built in 1972, in Tokyo's Ginza district on April 12, 2022. (AP)
Demolition teams start to take down the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an iconic structure designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa and built in 1972, in Tokyo's Ginza district on April 12, 2022. (AP)

Nakagin Capsule Tower, a building tucked away in a corner of downtown Tokyo that is made up of boxes stacked on top of each other, is an avant-garde honeycomb of science-fiction-era housing long admired as a masterpiece.

It’s now being demolished in a careful process that includes preserving some of its 140 capsules, to be shipped to museums around the world.

Preparations have been going on for months to clear the surrounding areas, for safely dismantling the landmark near Ginza. The first capsule will be removed in the next few weeks.

Built in 1972, the 13-floor building embodies the so-called "metabolism" vision of its architect Kisho Kurokawa: The idea that cities and buildings are always changing, reflecting life, in rhythm with the human body.

"No one exists divorced from the thoughts of those around him. All comes into existence through an assembly of causes. All things are interrelated. In accord with this principle, it is our aim to build an ideal world, step by step," Kurokawa wrote in his 1994 book, "Philosophy of Symbiosis."

Kurokawa died in 2007, at 73.

Although striking in appearance and concept, the building outlived modern construction guidelines and needed to be torn down.

Skyscrapers have popped up nearby, dwarfing Nakagin. A developer took over the property in 2021.

Tatsuyuki Maeda, who started using Nakagin as a second home in 2010, said he simply loved being in that 2.5 meter (8.2 foot) wide space, so tiny but cozy it felt like a child’s hideaway. And it got his creative juices going, he said.

"The view from that round window felt so good. At night, when cars sped by, their lights on the nearby freeway were pretty. And the cityscape was beautiful," Maeda said.

Appliances and shelves are built into the walls. A desk pops out in one section. In another is a Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder, state-of-the-art electronics of the 1970s that’s historical memorabilia now like the building itself.

Only about a third of Nakagin's residents lived there full-time in recent years. Most used it as offices and workspaces. They tended to be creative people, musicians, filmmakers and architects, as though it drew people sharing similar values.

Maeda, who does public relations work, owned 15 capsules, mainly to have a say in the building’s fate, and had rented some of them out. Residents would party together, he recalled.

He and others had been working together since 2014 to save Nakagin, first to prevent its destruction and rebuild it, but eventually to hand down its legacy as an artwork. The project raised money through crowd-funding and put out a book, complete with photos, in March, titled, "Nakagin Capsule Tower: The Last Record."

The preservation project calls for some of the capsules to allow for real-life living in a separate locale. Those in museums will be refinished by the Kurokawa architectural office, which went over the original designs to figure out how each box could be detached with minimal damage, a feat especially difficult in the crowded Ginza area.

Will Gardner, a Swarthmore College professor whose specialty is Japanese modernism, says the metabolist movement had its "moment" of recognition for its organic approach to Tokyo’s 20th Century urban-planning problems, such as over-crowding and a lack of infrastructure.

It was an era when Japan was rebuilding from the ruins of World War II, undergoing rapid economic growth, buzzing with creative energy and trying to define itself.

But metabolist designs did not win wide acceptance among real estate developers, construction companies or consumers, who all turned to more conservative prefabricated housing, said Gardner, who wrote "The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction."

"This was a generation of architects that came out in this era when everything had been destroyed. But at the same time there was a lot of dynamism, and the economy was on the rebound, and there seemed to be a moment when this big vision could really thrive," he said.

"For a lot of reasons, today’s Japan is very different."

Kurokawa was heavily influenced by Kenzo Tange, who designed the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. An art museum in Tokyo’s Roppongi that looks like a waving wall of glass, which opened in 2007, and the 1999 new wing of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam were designed by Kurokawa.

Nakagin was one of his early pieces. Its defiantly repetitive motif both celebrated and challenged mass production, appealing to individuals, especially those lost in conformist Japan.

Kurokawa developed the technology to install the units into a concrete core shaft with four high-tension bolts. The capsules were designed to be detachable and changed to new ones, or recycled, every 25 years.

That never happened.

Instead, after 50 years, the pieces are coming apart.

Kurokawa used to say that, long after his buildings were gone, his thinking would live on.

Kurokawa’s designs address sustainability and social accountability, said Tomohiro Fujisawa of Kisho Kurokawa Architect and Associates, issues that remain urgent today.

"The world maybe has finally caught up with him," Fujisawa said.



Smog Sickness: India’s Capital Struggles as Pollution Surges

An Indian man rides a bike to commute amid heavy smog near New Delhi, India, 05 November 2024. (EPA)
An Indian man rides a bike to commute amid heavy smog near New Delhi, India, 05 November 2024. (EPA)
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Smog Sickness: India’s Capital Struggles as Pollution Surges

An Indian man rides a bike to commute amid heavy smog near New Delhi, India, 05 November 2024. (EPA)
An Indian man rides a bike to commute amid heavy smog near New Delhi, India, 05 November 2024. (EPA)

The toxic smog season in India's capital has just begun, but those unable to escape cancer-causing poisonous fumes say the hazardous impact on health is already taking its toll.

New Delhi regularly ranks among the world's most polluted capitals, with a melange of factory and vehicle emissions exacerbated by agricultural fires blanketing the city each winter, stretching from mid-October until at least January.

Cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds trap deadly pollutants, suffocating the megacity of 30 million people in putrid fumes.

Factory worker Balram Kumar returns home exhausted from work, but then is up all night coughing.

"I am barely able to sleep all night," Kumar, 24, told AFP as he waited outside a special pollution clinic, set up at the government-run Ram Manohar Lohia hospital.

"My chest hurts every time I cough. I have been taking medicines but there is no relief," said Kumar.

He pointed dejectedly to an X-ray of his chest.

"My cough is just not going," he said.

- Thousands of deaths -

On Tuesday, the level of PM2.5 particles -- the smallest and most harmful, which can enter the bloodstream -- topped 278 micrograms per cubic meter, according to monitoring firm IQAir.

That is 18 times the daily maximum recommended by the World Health Organization.

On the worst days, levels can shoot up as high as 30 times the daily maximum.

Piecemeal government efforts to mitigate the smog, such as a public campaign encouraging drivers to turn off their engines at traffic lights, have failed to make an impact.

A study in the Lancet medical journal attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world's most populous country in 2019.

Air pollution in Delhi has worsened after a fireworks ban was widely flouted for raucous celebrations last week for the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali.

The cracker frenzy turned Delhi's winter skies dull grey.

Doctor Amit Suri, who heads the pollution clinic, said there is usually a surge of 20-25 percent in the number of patients turning up with respiratory issues after the festival.

This year, it is the same story.

"Most of the patients are coming with complaints of dry cough, throat irritation, running of eyes and some of them are also having skin rashes," Suri told AFP.

The hospital provides treatment and medicine free of cost.

None of its patients can afford private healthcare, and many cannot buy an air purifier for their homes.

The WHO says that air pollution can trigger strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.

- 'How will I survive?' -

A study published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal in July said more than seven percent of all deaths in 10 of India's biggest cities were linked to air pollution.

Delhi was the worst offender, with 12,000 annual deaths linked to air pollution -- or 11.5 percent of the total.

India's Supreme Court last month ruled that clean air was a fundamental human right, ordering both the central government and state-level authorities to take action.

But critics say arguments between rival politicians heading neighboring states -- as well as between central and state-level authorities -- have compounded the problem.

"We need to create awareness," said Doctor Ajay Shukla, the hospital's medical superintendent. "The problem is getting bigger by the day."

On the worst days, Shukla said, it is like chain-smoking cigarettes.

Doctors have been counselling the patients and providing a list of what to do to alleviate the health issues.

The main advice is to try and stay indoors, shut doors and windows, and wear anti-pollution masks while outside.

But Kanshi Ram, a 65-year-old daily wage laborer visiting the clinic, said he did not know what he should do to ease his nagging cough, which has kept him off work this week.

"Doctors are asking me not to go out and breathe the polluted air," Ram, who earns 500 rupees ($6) for each day that he works.

"But how will I survive if I don't go out?" he added. "I feel so helpless."