Anyone who has seen the Nakagin Capsule Towers knew that it was going to be inevitable that they would be torn down soon. In 2010 hot water was shut down due to a burst pipe, a net is thrown over the capsule to deter pigeons, parts are rusted, tiles broken, the building looks in a terrible state.
This comes at no surprise, most older buildings in Japan are quite badly maintained, it is often cheaper to tear a building down and rebuild, there are also hardly any conservation laws or regulations to deal with these kind of landmark buildings.
The main focus of this video is the symbolic significance of the building. The idea behind the capsules can, in my opinion, be traced back to Ludwig Hilbersheimer, who I have referenced to before. Architecture is space for human activities, and in a city like Tokyo these activities are not like in the traditional home focussed in one place. Instead these activities such as working but also eating, sleeping, entertaining and sex are spread throughout the city. The home, the small cell, the capsule is just a transitional point that the inhabitants of the greater Tokyo region traverse through.
I wrote a book about architecture, published by Springer it's available here: www.springer.com/gp/book/9789813346574
#Nakagin #CapsuleTower #Kurokawa
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