Metabolism’s rise and fall is bookended by two important events a decade apart. Its first manifesto dates from 1960 and marks the genesis of its theoretical formulation. Ten years later, theory evolved into practice with the Expo70 in Osaka. The event’s significance went far beyond the movement and came to be seen as an important moment in the definition and understanding of contemporary Japan.

A late arrival, Nakagin represented the last opportunity for the realisation of the movement’s ideas. As such Kisho Kurokawa, the building’s architect  and one of the founders of the movement, took the opportunity to sculpt an ideal. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) he could only build it on a scale much smaller than the theoretical projects he had previously developed. While the movement of the façade, the proportion of the base and the top of the cores were designed to shape a form that was  natural and organic, in fact this was only in theory. In clear conceptual contradiction, the architect stated publicly that each inhabitant would contribute to the construction of the building’s identity, but in reality it was he who merged all the decisions.

And while it was presented as the house of the future, the capsule design was in fact based upon the interpretation of several references and traditions from Japanese culture. The area calculation was derived from the size
of a traditional tea ceremony room. The shape and proportion of the window were a reinterpretation of the ‘Enlightenment Window’ from Kyoto’s Genkoan Temple and the life cycle suggested by Kurokawa was a direct allusion  to the Ise Shrine, rebuilt every 20 years. The furniture was supposed to be built with slight, avant-garde and innovative materials. Instead, less technologically demanding lacquered pinewood  was used. And even with such limited space, the bathroom was designed with a traditional bathtub. The apparatus of the Nakagin hides its references: the proclaimed Metabolist future fed off an interpretation of its past.

In 1972 the Nakagin Capsule Tower was portrayed in the media as a sign of ‘the capsule era’. With its avant-garde aesthetic it proposed a mutant quality, ....

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Contrary to the Metabolist idea of a living structure, the capsules were never updated. Materials have not withstood the test of time, indeed, they weren’t supposed to. The problems only increase by the day: leaks, rust and corrosion. The idea of mutation never took root: reality deviated from the anticipated future, both that of the building and of society. It seems that today, its cultural-historical value is not widely appreciated, making the next few decades all the more uncertain for Nakagin.

Will the residents be bought out, the land sold to the highest bidder and the tower razed to make way for a new, generic skyscraper? Or will the building be nostalgically restored to its original condition, becoming a museum of itself? Perhaps nothing will happen and melancholy will win, with no consensus about the Nakagin, leaving it to rot. Or will the Metabolist future finally arrive, with the deteriorated capsules being replaced by contemporary ones with an iPhone adapter? All options carry some probability. Whatever the future holds, until then, one of Japan’s most iconic buildings remains a prospect of the past It rests awkwardly, hoping  its eventual recognition will come. 

Ana Luisa Soares1 and Filipe Magalhães2, fala atelier in Porto.

• 1. (Oporto, 1988) is a graduate student at Faculdade de Arquitectura do Porto, Portugal, and at Tokyo University, Japan; wrote the thesis ‘The matter of ideas’ and worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Toyo Ito in Tokyo.
• 2. (Oporto, 1987) graduated in architecture at Faculdade de Arquitectura do Porto, Portugal, and at Fakulteta za Arhitekturo u Ljubljani, Slovenia; wrote the thesis ‘between the abstract and the figurative’ and worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and SANAA and Sou Fujimoto in Tokyo.