Metabolist memories

Between the cost and litany of problems facing the tower, you might reasonably ask what the point of saving it is. But the ideas that lie behind Nakagin give the building vast historical and architectural importance, with metabolism being Japan’s first postwar architectural movement of international significance.

Responding to both the devastation of Japan during World War II and the socioeconomic transformations that followed it, metabolism posited an idea of urbanism that saw cities and buildings as evolving and developing in the manner of living organisms — a radical challenge to existing ideas of city planning, with the metabolists prioritizing process over grand, fixed visions for the urban environment. A sense of the significance of the movement is given by the fact that three architects associated with metabolism have won the Pritzker prize.

“This metabolist movement presented the idealism of architecture in the 1960s: Many goals they set for the movement or for architecture or for city design remain the high kinds of ideals of many architects,” says Zhongjie Lin, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design and author of “Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan.”

Much of the work of the metabolists, however, remained theoretical, with few built examples in existence — other notable buildings include Tange’s Yamanashi Press and Broadcasting Center — further increasing Nakagin Capsule Tower’s importance.

In particular, the ideas behind the tower of modularity, industrialization and an embrace of recyclability and compact living still resonate today, says Lin, who points to ongoing attempts to build prefabricated towers and the existence of the small, yet adaptable Muji Hut as examples of Nakagin’s enduring relevance.

“Nakagin Capsule Tower represents the dream of a new type of urban living and a completely new urban form,” Lin says.

Metabolism itself tended to overreach, however, with many ideas not being supported by the technology of the time. Although Nakagin’s capsules were envisaged as being replaceable, with owners changing and upgrading their capsule, or even moving it to a completely different location, as they wished, the building design doesn’t quite allow for such a free-wheeling approach to city living — capsules were installed from the bottom up, meaning that moving one requires all of those above it, too. The planned modularity of Tange’s Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center, also located in Ginza, has similarly gone unrealized.

And at the time of its construction, Nakagin Capsule Tower was pitched toward a more prosaic demographic — salarymen used to working long into the night and in need of a centrally located space in which to live and work. Pitching the building to those staying in the office until 2 a.m. now seems slightly jarring in a world of high-profile incidents of karōshi (death by overwork), but Maeda insists the ideas behind the tower were ahead of their time and today’s lifestyles have finally caught up, citing trends toward minimalist living, nomadic lifestyles and the embrace of koya (cabins) as living spaces.