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.



Forecasts Warn of Possible Winter Storms across US during Thanksgiving Week

A drone view shows a damaged area, following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Asheville, North Carolina, US, September 29, 2024. (Reuters)
A drone view shows a damaged area, following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Asheville, North Carolina, US, September 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Forecasts Warn of Possible Winter Storms across US during Thanksgiving Week

A drone view shows a damaged area, following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Asheville, North Carolina, US, September 29, 2024. (Reuters)
A drone view shows a damaged area, following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Asheville, North Carolina, US, September 29, 2024. (Reuters)

Forecasters through the US issued warnings that another round of winter weather could complicate travel leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, while California and Washington state continue to recover from storm damage and power outages.
In California, where a person was found dead in a vehicle submerged in floodwaters on Saturday, authorities braced for more precipitation while grappling with flooding and small landslides from a previous storm. Thousands in the Pacific Northwest remained without power after multiple days in the dark.
The National Weather Service office in Sacramento, California, issued a winter storm warning for the state's Sierra Nevada for Saturday through Tuesday, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph (88 kph). Total snowfall of roughly 4 feet (1.2 meters) was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations expected Monday and Tuesday.
The Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow Monday and the East Coast will be the most impacted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, forecasters said.
A low pressure system is forecast to bring rain to the Southeast early Thursday before heading to the Northeast. Areas from Boston to New York could see rain and strong winds, with snowfall possible in parts of northern New Hampshire, northern Maine and the Adirondacks. If the system tracks further inland, there could be less snow and more rain in the mountains, forecasters said.
Deadly 'bomb cyclone’ on West Coast Earlier this week, two people died when the storm arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of thousands lost power, mostly in the Seattle area, before strong winds moved through Northern California. A rapidly intensifying “ bomb cyclone ” that hit the West Coast on Tuesday brought fierce winds that resulted in home and vehicle damage.
Rescue crews in Guerneville, California, recovered a body inside a vehicle bobbing in floodwaters around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Rob Dillion said, noting the deceased was presumed to be a victim of the storm but an autopsy had not yet been conducted.
Santa Rosa, California, saw its wettest three-day period on record with about 12.5 inches (32 centimeters) of rain by Friday evening, the National Weather Service in the Bay Area reported. Vineyards in nearby Windsor, California, were flooded on Saturday.
Tens of thousands without power in Seattle area Some 80,000 people in the Seattle area were still without electricity after this season’s strongest atmospheric river, a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows over land.
The power came back in the afternoon at Katie Skipper’s home in North Bend, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Seattle, after being out since Tuesday. She was tired from taking cold showers, warming herself with a wood stove and using a generator to run the refrigerator, but Skipper said those inconveniences paled in comparison to the damage other people suffered, such as from fallen trees.
“That’s really sad and scary,” she said.
Northeast gets needed precipitation Another storm brought rain to New York and New Jersey, where rare wildfires have raged in recent weeks, and heavy snow to northeastern Pennsylvania. The precipitation was expected to help ease drought conditions after an exceptionally dry fall.
“It’s not going to be a drought buster, but it’s definitely going to help when all this melts,” said Bryan Greenblatt, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Binghamton, New York.
Heavy snow fell in northeastern Pennsylvania, including the Pocono Mountains. Higher elevations reported up to 17 inches (43 centimeters), with lesser accumulations in valley cities including Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Less than 80,000 customers in 10 counties lost power.
Precipitation in West Virginia helped put a dent in the state’s worst drought in at least two decades and boosted ski resorts preparing to open their slopes in the weeks ahead.