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Preservation of Artifacts and Heritage A3
105
Paradox of a Landmark that is not: the life of the Nakagin Capsule Tower
Ishida, Aki *1
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Virginia Tech , USA
Abstract
Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972) by Kisho Kurokawa has been at the center of a preservation debate for over a
decade. In the Metabolist spirit of continual growth, the architect designed the capsule living units to be
replaced every 25 years while the concrete cores were to permanently remain. In the 43 years since its
completion, no replacement has taken place. The building is in an advanced state of decay and neglect, but a
strong voice of opposition from architects worldwide has continued to postpone demolition. A point of
contention is that it has not reached a 50-year mark at which a work of architecture could, having proven its
significance on its own, qualify for protection as historic landmark in Japan. The reason for Nakagin Capsule
Tow er ’s ul tim ate demol iti on, iron ica lly, may be it s in abi lit y t o l ive up t o it s pr inc ipal s th at made it
landmark-worthy in the first place – the idea of the metabolic cycle, interchangeability, and adaptability. The
paper will question preservation of a building which materialized ideals and principals that are culturally
significant and yet did not economically and physically survive for 50 years. Furthermore, it will examine
what it means to preserve a building such as the Nakagin Capsule Tower that was built upon the ideas of both
permanence and impermanence.
Keywords: Nakagin; Kurokawa; Preservation; Impermanence; Post-War
Fig 1 Nakagin Capsule Tower on July 10, 2014 during the
author’s stay in unit 907B. A makeshift drain pipe hangs from a
capsule. The net was placed to protect the pedestrians on the
street after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
1) The Nakagin Capsule Tower
As the The New York Times critic Nicolai Ourousoff
wrote in 2009, the Nakagin Capsule Tower by Kisho
Kurokawa is a noteworthy carrier of cultural values:
“The Capsule Tower is not only gorgeous architecture;
like all great buildings, it is the crystallization of a
far-reaching cultural ideal. Its existence also stands as
a powerful reminder of paths not taken, of the
possibility of worlds shaped by different sets of
values” (Ourousoff 2009). How are we to determine
when a building should be demolished to make place
for new structures, or preserved and restored as a
cultural monument when the anticipated nomadic
bachelordom in capsules did not turn out to be as
desirable 43 years later? Moreover, what does it mean
to preserve a building that was built on a principal that
it would grow and transform with its context over
time?
The Tower consists of two steel frame and reinforced
concrete cores to which 144 capsule units are attached
with high-tension steel bolts. Stairs spiral around the
elevator with capsule doors accessed from staggered
*Contact Author: Aki Ishida, Assistant Professor
Virginia Tech, S chool o f Architec ture + De sign
201 Cowgill Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0205, USA
Tel : 1-917-514-1653 e-mail: aishida@vt.edu
Aki Ishida
106
landings that occur every five risers. This spiral layout
enables the capsule windows to face all four cardinal
directions. The capsules were prefabricated off-site by
a railroad car manufacturer, with modules consisting
of a bathroom unit, a circular window, and built-in
furniture and appliances. The capsules were brought to
the site on trucks late at night and lifted into place by a
crane. Each capsule is individually anchored to the
concrete shaft with the intent that it could be replaced
without affecting others. The entire construction took
only one year, with all 144 units sold by the time of
construction completion (Lin 2001). Kurokawa
intended the concrete cores to remain while the
capsules are removed and replaced every 25 years, but
this never occurred. There were eight capsule types
structurally, depending upon the relationship of the
entrance door to the stairs and the mechanical systems,
and the window placement. Unit owners had the
option of selecting from eight different interior
finishes. There was no kitchen as the units were
designed for businessmen - in the 1970s urban
professionals were predominantly men - who ate in
restaurants and only came home to lounge and sleep.
Many units were owned by companies who used them
as temporary housing for their traveling employees, as
business offices, or as investments. In 1980, about 35
persons actually slept in the capsules overnight
regularly while the rest used the capsules during the
day only (Watanabe 1980).
2) The Debate
As the Tower aged, the question of replacement or
demolition did not come as a surprise to its architects.
Since 1998, Kisho Kurokawa Architects and
Associates had been working on plans to replace the
capsules while keeping in place and repairing the
original concrete cores. In February 2005, Worl d
Architecture News (WA N ) website published a poll
they took of over 10,000 architects in 100 countries.
The results were overwhelmingly in favor of
preserving the Tower in some form: 75 percent
favored replacing the capsules, 20 percent supported
to leave as existing, and five percent for demolition.
Many commented that the architect’s idea of evolution
over time should be honored and that they want to see
the capsules replaced and the Tower saved as an
example of Metabolist movement (Nakagin Tower
dilemma 2005). However, on April 15, 2007, 80
percent of the capsule unit owners voted in favor of
demolishing the building and replacing it with a more
profitable 14-storey building. This plan would give
each capsule owner 60 percent more space for the
same price than re-building the original design
(Solomon 2007). Kurokawa, then age 73, went on a
passionate campaign to save the Tower. Using his
persuasive public relations skills that he honed and
exercised all his career, the aged architect garnered
support of architects worldwide. In October of 2007,
Kurokawa passed away of heart failure. Development
of the new tower had stalled due to the economical
recession of the late 2000s, the public suspicion of
postwar architecture, and the lack of allure in mass
housing unit investment (Ourousoff 2009). In 2013,
there were only about ten to fifteen people living in
the Tower while the rest were abandoned (Magalhães
& Soares 2013). More recently, those who want to
save the Tower have been purchasing units one by one,
including architect Masato Abe who has been renting
his unit on the short-term apartment rental website
Airbnb (Forster 2014). In August 2015, Japanese
crowdfunding website indicates that, with an increase
in the number of unit owners who are for restoration
that construction of a brand new building will face a
significant difficulty (MotionGallery 2015).
The Nakagin Capsule Tower is a paradox in which its
argument for demolition may be equally compelling
as of that for preservation. Arata Isozaki, an architect
strongly associated with the Metabolists yet not a
member, makes a case for preserving it for it has
attained a significant cultural value. Toyo Ito, who
was a student in the 1960’s during the Matabolist’s
intellectual peak and started his office just as the
dreams of Metabolism were starting to fade, says he
sees architecture as living matter and finds it difficult
to justify preserving a building that no longer
functions (Nakagin Capsule Tower 2001). This debate
will continue to resurface as more modern buildings
face demolition in Japan.
3) Metabolist Theory on Renewal and Preservation
What further complicates and fascinates this debate is
the extensive writing Kurokawa left (He boasted
having published 100 books) on the paradoxical
Japanese notion of achieving permanence through
impermanence. He spoke of the ancient, culturally
important Ise Shrine as having been ‘preserved
unaltered’ by being identically rebuilt every 20 years.
Preservation of Artifacts and Heritage A3
107
He wrote, “…the Japanese have never felt that the
materials themselves have a sense of eternity. On the
contrary, they are and always have been conscious of
the spirit and philosophy beyond the materials and
regard the form as an intermediary conveying that
spirit and philosophy of human beings.” (Kurokawa,
1977, p. 32). The idea of constant renewal is deeply
rooted in Buddhist religion. Kurokawa emphasized in
his essay ‘Philosophy of Metabolism’ that Japanese
architecture, traditionally built mostly in wood,
embodies the idea of impermanence. According to
Kurokawa, the Buddhist idea of muso holds that
“human beings should not become too attached to any
one idea or place but should always remain aware of
being in eternal time.” He goes on to say that because
most important Japanese buildings are of wood, they
are accustomed to gradual destruction, or in other
words, participate in the Buddhist idea of rinne, the
on-going cycle of life and death (Kurokawa 1977).
As Los Angeles-based Japanese architect Yo-ichiro
Hakamori says, whereas it would be significant for a
West ern culture to retain the very same blocks of stone
that were built ancient temples, in Japan, permanence
of the artifact is valued less than the process of craft
that is passed on for generations. (Hakamori 2003).
In order to understand the notion of (im)permanence
in Nakagin Capsule Tower, it is necessary to reference
the core ideas of Metabolism as explained by
Kurokawa. In the essay “Grave-Post of Contemporary
Architecture” written in 1978, he observed that
modernization in Japan starting with the Meiji
Restoration (1868 to 1912) meant Westernization
based on industrialization. In architecture, this
resulted in inviting a British architect Josiah Conder to
teach at the University of Tokyo how to emulate
West ern arch itect ure s tyle s ra ther than deve lopin g
Japan’s own. Kurokawa stated that the inspiration for
the Metabolism movement was the desire to “inlay a
multi-dimensional value system into contemporary
architecture which has been built on a
mono-dimensional Western cultural value system.”
(Kurokawa 1978, p. 2). The two pillars of the
Metabolism movement were to resist the course of
cultural evolution based on Western values, and to
“search for a junction point between Japanese culture
and contemporary architecture,” which he calls “an
introspective soul search.” He criticized those who,
during the World War I colonization and even after
Worl d War II , tr ied to resu scita te an d copy tradi tiona l
Japanese structures of Jomon and Yayoi eras, calling
such an approach ‘sterile’. Kurokawa long argued for
defining the present, not the past, as the backbone of
Japanese culture (Kurokawa 1978)
4) Capsule as Cyborg
The capsule approach to housing was rooted in the
idea of the co-existence of technology with humans.
To Ku rok awa, the capsu le wa s more th an a housi ng
unit. He opened his Capsule Declaration of 1969 with
this: “The capsule is cyborg architecture… . As a
human being equipped with a man-made internal
organ becomes a new species which is neither
machine nor human, so the capsule transcends man
and equipment.” He likened his capsule to a spaceship,
a container that would be meaningless without an
astronaut inside, and vice versa (Kurokawa 1977, p.
75). In a way that is characteristic of Kurokawa, he
looked to the future while considering Japan’s past. As
Charles Jencks points out in the introduction to
Kurokawa’s book Metabolism in Architecture, the
Nakagin capsules were designed in tatami module
proportions of 4x2.5 meters, or 107 square feet. Even
though it had futuristic technologies, the capsule also
had the smallness and proportions of traditional space
(Jencks 1977). In the 1969 text Capsule Declaration,
Kurokawa included images of traditional Japanese
kago, a small palanquin strung from a pole carried by
two people, which he called ‘capsules’. He declared
that in the future, a human’s status will be measured
by mobility, not by the size of a tract of land
(Kurokawa 1977). This model of mobile living,
Kurokawa traced in his 1969 text Homo Movens to the
tradition of Japanese agriculture workers traveling
from villages to urban areas in the winters and
dwelling in seasonal homes. He believed that this
mobile mode of living would increasingly become
central to Japan’s urban life. He speculates “For
modern man in our highly mobile society – for homo
movens – the capsule dwelling will probably come to
be of high importance” (Kurokawa 1977, p. 105).
Japan 40 years later, however, did not turn out to be as
he dreamed. In fact, more people in their 20’s and 30’s
live with their parents than they did twenty years ago
(Kremer and Hammond 2013) – a dramatic change
from the ambitious and mobile road warriors of the
Aki Ishida
108
economic boom period.
5) Japan and Impermanence
In a 2005 interview, Kurokawa recalls witnessing his
hometown of Nagoya, a city of 1.5 million, destroyed
to the ground overnight by hundreds of bombers. He
said, “War helped me discover Japanese culture. As I
stood amidst the ruins of Nagoya … there was nothing
but scorched earth for as far as I could see”. His father,
a prominent architect in the region, said, “Now we
must build the city from scratch” (Kurokawa 1977, p.
23). Seeing a city vanish in a day made an impression
on the young Kurokawa that everything, including
cities and architecture, was impermanent. Following
the devastating loss in the war, avant-garde Japanese
architects continued to look to the same iconic
buildings in traditional Japanese architecture studied
by the imperialist architects of his father’s generation,
which Koolhaas found shocking and
incomprehensible, but in ways that were different
from the previous generation. Kurokawa said the
notions of impermanence and prefabrication, not the
outward form, was what he took from studying the
Katsura Palace and the Ise shrine (Koolhaas et al
2011). He noted that Katsura was expanded twice over
150 years into an asymmetrical plan, with different
types of modules for each phase, and that at each stage,
people said it was a perfect beauty, “perfect as a
constantly changing process.” The Palace embodied
metabolic and cyclical idea of growth over time,
which made it an apt building for the Metabolism text
(Koolhaas et al 2011, p. 379).
Kurokawa claimed that the Metabolists were seeking
modernity in philosophy, not in style. This was where
they looked to traditions of Ise and Katsura where,
unlike the visible traditions of the west, they sought
out the invisible. He said, “We are talking about Ise as
an invisible continuity: every 20 years the visible – the
architecture – is rebuilt. We say the tradition has been
maintained for 1,200 years, though the material is
always new” (Koolhaas et al 2011, p. 385-391).
6) Capsule Replacement Proposal
Kurokawa’s office made elaborate plans to replace the
capsules while repairing and preserving the concrete
cores. The steel connection bolts also were
dangerously in need of replacement. Kurokawa did
not intend the capsules to be the exact replica of the
original, however. He said, “I want to see new ones
built to the same design, but incorporating new
technologies like renewable energies and broadband.”
(Kuchrek 2007, p. 63). Structurally, the 1972 capsules
had 0.8mm thin steel sheets with asbestos fire
protection sandwiched in-between. The new
replacements were to have 6mm thick fire-resistant
steel, which is used frequently in Japan for protection
from earthquake fires. The thin steel will enable the
building to maintain the appearance of the original
module while meeting current codes. The local Tokyo
government officials had even offered to waive the
stringent requirements for fire stairs so that the
original stairs would not need to be modified
(Kuchrek 2007).
There are other factors of resistance in play. As
architecture critic Hiroshi Watanabe remarked in 1980,
“Any capsule is supposed to be replaceable
‘theoretically,’ without disturbing the others. There are
three things that might, however, stand in the way:
money, other owners, and the architect’s own design.”
At the time he wrote this, the Tower was only eight
years old, and the estimated cost of the capsule would
have been three times the original construction cost of
$4,500 each (Watanabe 1980, p. 76). Kurokawa’s
office estimated the replacement cost at $80,000
shortly before his death. The cost of getting a crane to
access the capsule is high for a site that is significantly
more built up today. In 1972, the Tower stood
prominently as the tallest building in the surrounding
blocks. Today, other buildings encroach tightly on
three sides and an elevated highway on the fourth. The
tower also stands on prime Tokyo real estate. On
average, the construction cost of a building in Tokyo
accounts for a tenth of the price of its site. This cost
factor coupled with the tradition of impermanent
Japanese architecture results in a relatively high rate
of demolition and redevelopment. Then-president of
real estate firm Nakagin, Torizo Watanabe was
impressed by Kurokawa’s Takara Beautilion at the
1970 Osaka Expo, and he commissioned Kurokawa to
design the Tower in Tokyo (Lin 2011). Nakagin found
difficulties in the the mixed use that included hotel,
apartment, and office. The residents wanted to
building to be secure, while the businesses wanted
people to come and go with less restriction. Each unit
was billed separately for phone and electricity, but the
fuel and hot water costs were split among the unit
Preservation of Artifacts and Heritage A3
109
owners. This may have been good for those who lived
there regularly, but not for those who were there only
intermittently. The capsules walls were thin, which
made them hot in the summer and cold in the winter.
With no operable window, it was completely
dependent on mechanical system. Contrary to the
Metabolist theory, the environmental controls of the
capsule were not designed like a living organism but
as machines (Watanabe 1980). On top of all this, the
contractors repeatedly complained that it is impossible
to fully access the pipes run alongside the cores and
underneath the floors of the units, which accounts for
the extensive water leakage throughout. To day, th e
building is no longer water-tight, there is no hot water,
many abandoned capsules have moldy and fallen
ceilings and walls, and make-shift water proofing
contraptions made of plastic bags and tubes are
commons sights in the hallways.1
A few o f the capsule o wners today, are p assiona tely
attached the design of the original capsules and do not
want the buildings to evolve and the capsules renewed
(Kuchrek 2007). Ironically, this desire for
conservation is counter to the architect’s original
Metabolist concept. What began as a futuristic design
now suffers from resistance of Mid-century Modern
nostalgia. Here again is one of the building’s
conflicting, multidimensional characters.
7) Question of Culture-Specific Historic
Preservation
Japan is one of the few countries to designate the title
“National Living Treasure” to a living person
practicing a craft. Like the Ise Shrine, there is more
value placed on the process associated with making an
artifact than the artifacts themselves. Had the renewal
of the capsules taken place after 25 years in
accordance with the Metabolist principles, the
Nakagin building’s preservation method may have
been what made it deserving of a landmark status.
Should preservation of buildings be specific to its
culture, and if so, how? As other iconic works of
Modern architecture age, this appears to be an
increasingly important question. Kurokawa was
arguably the first and the most vocal among Japanese
1 Based on the author’s stay at unit 907B through Airbnb on in
July 9, 2014.
architects to use Japanese vocabulary such as en and
jiga (Buddhist words for self and identity) to write
about architecture to a global audience (Uesaka 1974).
As a building that embodied concepts that are
Japanese in its roots, perhaps the ways in which it is
preserved or evolves also needs to be thought of in
non-West ern ways.
Starting in 1880 to 1894, the Ministry of Home Affairs
established historic Shinto Shrines and Buddhist
Tem ple Pres ervation Grants to protect historic
buildings from Westernization, vandalism, and the
anti-Buddhist movement (Asano, 238). Japan also
has laws to protect intangible folk cultural properties
such as manners and customs. In outward appearance,
the Nakagin Capsule Tower looks nothing like a
Buddhist building, even though the ideas embodied by
the architecture are rooted in Buddhist ideas and
influenced by Shinto religious buildings such as the
Ise Grand Shrine. Unlike his predecessors of the
Imperialist era whose work took on the appearance of
Shinto buildings, Kurokawa was one of the first to
materialize Japanese spatial and philosophical ideas
into modern buildings. The influence of ideas,
however, is not sufficient to earn historic designation.
Had the preservation techniques, or the process of
renewal for the capsules been successfully executed
every 25 years, then could it have been protected
under a preservation law for its renewal process?
In Japan, the priority of property rights is protected by
the Constitution. As common in other parts of the
world, property rights and the profits associated with
them are often the barrier to preservation of buildings.
The owner must consent to the designation of
Traditional Buildings Conversation District (TBCD)
for the benefit of the public over the private (Asano
1999). The challenges of obtaining a historic
preservation building status for a modern building is
not just limited to Japan. Docomomo (Documentation
and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and
Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement) was
established in 1988 to protect significant modern
buildings, including the Nakagin Capsule Tower
which was listed as its architectural heritage site in
2006. While it brings awareness to the listed buildings,
it does not provide legal protection against demolition.
Aki Ishida
110
8) Life and Death of Buildings
Abandoned by its client, its capsules too compact and
cramped for living even for the Japanese, standing on
a piece of land that is very desirable for new
development, the Nakagin Capsule Tower no longer
participates in the metabolic process of a
contemporary city. Preservation architect Jorge
Otero-Pailos refers to James Marston Fitch’s idea of
the ‘fourth dimension’ of architecture, which was not
simply time but to “the process, whereby preservation
supplements architectural form in time, helping
buildings achieve the cultural significance that they
should, but for whatever reason, couldn’t on their
own” (Koolhaas et al, 2014, p. 98). We speak of
buildings as living and surviving ‘on their own’, but as
with humans, longevity of a building is dependent
upon multiple external factors, including maintenance
over the years by its owner, the architect’s design for
its aging or evolution over time, property values, and
financial resources to preserve or reconstruct. For a
work of architecture that is deemed worthy of
preservation for its cultural value, the constituents
including the architect, the owner, and the city must
actively help a building continue to adapt to and
participate in the metabolic cycles of a living city.
Rather than thinking of the preservation debate as a
question of whether to preserve it, an appropriate
debate would be the question of ‘how’. What it means
to preserve the Nakagin Capsule Tower is neither
reconstructing the Tower based on the original
blueprints nor demolishing it to make place for a new
building.
As with other Metabolist attempts to translate
concepts into buildings, for a complex set of reasons,
the Nakagin Capsule Tower did not get the human
assistance it needed to adapt and change with the city
of Tokyo. Its deteriorating state is the clearest
evidence that a new life was not being incubated over
the years. The reason for the Tower’s ultimate
demolition may be its inability to live up to its
principals that made it landmark-worthy in the first
place – the idea of the metabolic cycle,
interchangeability, and adaptability.
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