Once a futuristic icon of Japan’s architectural heritage, the ‘Nakagin Capsule Tower’, a stack of box apartments in Tokyo’s Shimbashi business district, is due to be demolished next month following a long battle to try to to save her.
The owners of the modules of this building designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa and inaugurated in 1972, however, want to try to save some of them before the demolition which should begin on April 12, told AFP one of them. them, Tatsuyuki Maeda.
The structure, made up of two adjoining towers of 11 and 13 floors, is made up of 140 “capsules”, small rooms with large portholes of just 10 square meters, distributed around a central pillar.
Originally these modules were designed to be removed independently of each other and replaced every 25 years, but this was never done and these elements gradually fell into disrepair.
“We do not yet know how many capsules we will be able to save, but we plan to repair some damaged parts to renovate them and send them to museums, for example,” said Mr. Maeda, who bought his first capsule in 2010.
“It’s not completely finished for this building and I can’t wait to see the capsules in their new life,” he added, adding that the agency founded by Kisho Kurokawa, who died in 2007, was participating in the project. .
Mr. Maeda and other owners campaigned for years to save the tower, an emblem of the metabolist architectural movement born in post-war Japan, which imagined the “city of the future”.
In recent years, as water damage damaged the Nakagin Capsule Tower, more and more owners came out in favor of demolishing the structure, rather than paying for its costly maintenance.
Lovers of this piece of heritage were sorry on social networks for its announced demolition, while showing themselves resigned.
“She is precious, but demolishing her was the right decision, because she was very damaged,” wrote one of them on Twitter.