October 2009 Archives
The Nakagin Tower was proposing the smallest living unit - the capsule - to be replaced every 20 years. However they were all the same. Their interiors were clearly defined, all furnished the same way. Also the units were too small and not flexible at all.
In the rebrief, the idea of having two different rates of change for two different layers of the building will be kept. In the diagram on the right, you can see the grid structure being stable and the rest changing in time in an abstract way.
It shows the idea of having different sizes of capsules, located on a rigid system which includes circulation and structural elements.
The problem would be still keeping an enclosed space, "the capsule" unit and not letting the city on the vertical to act like the city on the horizontal.
In the re-briefed Nakagin Tower, the boundaries between the "capsules" would fade and rigid space integrated with the main structure would host shared spaces between the units.
In the rebrief, the idea of having two different rates of change for two different layers of the building will be kept. In the diagram on the right, you can see the grid structure being stable and the rest changing in time in an abstract way.
It shows the idea of having different sizes of capsules, located on a rigid system which includes circulation and structural elements.
The problem would be still keeping an enclosed space, "the capsule" unit and not letting the city on the vertical to act like the city on the horizontal.
In the re-briefed Nakagin Tower, the boundaries between the "capsules" would fade and rigid space integrated with the main structure would host shared spaces between the units.
In 1970, according to a chiche, the third most famous man in Japan
(after the emperor and the prime minister), who even had his own TV
show was heading a group of architects who wants to change the way our
cities work completely.
They believed the city as an organism shoud change at various rates.Partnering up with the Nakagin Construction Company, this man succeded to build a tower re presenting his idea. A tower that is made out of steel that hosts lifts and staircases for the capsules that will be plugged on it later.
The tower was permanent and the capsules were to be replaced every 25 years. The capsules were likes leaves on a tree. They were an aesthetic of death instead of an aesthetic of eternity
In 1972 September, the construction was completed. The capsule rooms that were built off the site and had their own built-in calculator, tv, radio and shower captured the public's attention.In a month's time all 140 of the capsules were sold out.
Unlike the projection of the designer, the buyers were not only in-town bachelors. 42 capsules were used by families that used the capsules as an extension to their home. Another 42 were bought by companies that found the capsules a good alternative to the hotel rooms. 56 capsules were owned by the in town bachelors.
It didn't take a long time for Nakagin Company to decide on turning
this new field of industry into a big profit maker for themselves. They
requested Kurokawa's office to design 14 more towers next to the existing towers in Ginza to host 3920 capsules.By the mid-October 1972 there were many complaints for the unpractical interior of the capsules which opened the door for another industry to go into the capsule business. The "interior knocking down" teams were making good money for customizing the interiors of the capsules.
The number of complaints became more and more while the quick construction was almost finished. The towers were almost finished but clearly the capsules were not working with the built-in interiors.
"The Nakagin Tower has 140 capsules, each sold for between £5.000 - £7.000 within one month of erection in 1972."
1972
"Well, in this case I designed the building to have its capsules replaced every 25 years, so it's ridiculous that 25 years have gone by and nothing has been done. That was a really stupid mistake. For example, satellites have to be replaced. If you don't maintain the building and replace its parts, you can't go on to sell it to somebody else, but this hedge fund comes along and invests in the building, telling people that "it'll be fine, it'll be fine, we can sell it on without changing any of the parts", but that could lead to an horrific accident. It's the same with cars: Honda makes excellent cars, as do Toyota, Porsche and Benz, but all their cars need proper maintenance and the replacement of parts. If you don't do that, you'll have an accident. This applies to cars and to everything else: everything is designed to be maintained. Everybody knows this, and yet you have the ownership of all these capsules divided between 140 people, which makes things really inconvenient."
1999
1972
"Well, in this case I designed the building to have its capsules replaced every 25 years, so it's ridiculous that 25 years have gone by and nothing has been done. That was a really stupid mistake. For example, satellites have to be replaced. If you don't maintain the building and replace its parts, you can't go on to sell it to somebody else, but this hedge fund comes along and invests in the building, telling people that "it'll be fine, it'll be fine, we can sell it on without changing any of the parts", but that could lead to an horrific accident. It's the same with cars: Honda makes excellent cars, as do Toyota, Porsche and Benz, but all their cars need proper maintenance and the replacement of parts. If you don't do that, you'll have an accident. This applies to cars and to everything else: everything is designed to be maintained. Everybody knows this, and yet you have the ownership of all these capsules divided between 140 people, which makes things really inconvenient."
1999
"We have in Japan an aesthetic of death whereas you have an aesthetic
of eternity. the Ise Shrines are rebuilt every twenty years in the same
form or spirit; whereas you try to preserve the actual Greek Temple,
the original material, as if it could last for eternity."
...City as an organism changes at various rates.
...Replace the mechnanical analogy of orthodox modern architecture.
...By clearly seperating parts of a building or city which have different rates of change, they allow certain structures to remain undistributed when others wear out.
...One doesn't have to destroy a whole building, or part of a city, every time one part breaks down.
Kisho Kurokawa
...City as an organism changes at various rates.
...Replace the mechnanical analogy of orthodox modern architecture.
...By clearly seperating parts of a building or city which have different rates of change, they allow certain structures to remain undistributed when others wear out.
...One doesn't have to destroy a whole building, or part of a city, every time one part breaks down.
1970 Nakagin Tower (Tokyo)
iconic dream:
Nakagin Capsule Tower became the symbol of the Japanese obsession for inventing the highest technology. It would not have a chance to exist for this long in any other city than the city of future, Tokyo. Unfortunately if it can't be financed for renovation, very soon it will be demolished.
1955 Inland Steel (Chicago)
The Inland Steel building was designed by two architects one after the other, Walter Netsch was the first architect and later SOM's Bruce Graham took over the project. Out of these three post-war buildings, the most successful one was Inland Steel.
Programmatically it was very succesful because of the innovative idea of collecting the services and the office floors in two different towers.
iconic materiality, iconic power:
The "steel" building was directly associated with the products of the company itself and liked by public. It was also backed by the newly elected Chicago mayor as a icon of rebirth for Chicago after the World War II.
1950 Lever House (New York)
architect client:
The architects of Lever House were very lucky because their client was a trained but not practicing architect heading Unilever. The brief he gave to the architects was very unusual and was letting them explore the simple beauty of the modern architecture for the first time in New York.
iconic advertising:
More than being succesful as a building to live in, Lever House was an icon, a symbol for the simple and elegant architecture of the century in New York. It survived because Unilever thought it's different and clean look was a good advertising tool for themselves.
iconic dream:
Nakagin Capsule Tower became the symbol of the Japanese obsession for inventing the highest technology. It would not have a chance to exist for this long in any other city than the city of future, Tokyo. Unfortunately if it can't be financed for renovation, very soon it will be demolished.
1955 Inland Steel (Chicago)
The Inland Steel building was designed by two architects one after the other, Walter Netsch was the first architect and later SOM's Bruce Graham took over the project. Out of these three post-war buildings, the most successful one was Inland Steel.
Programmatically it was very succesful because of the innovative idea of collecting the services and the office floors in two different towers.
iconic materiality, iconic power:
The "steel" building was directly associated with the products of the company itself and liked by public. It was also backed by the newly elected Chicago mayor as a icon of rebirth for Chicago after the World War II.
1950 Lever House (New York)
architect client:
The architects of Lever House were very lucky because their client was a trained but not practicing architect heading Unilever. The brief he gave to the architects was very unusual and was letting them explore the simple beauty of the modern architecture for the first time in New York.
iconic advertising:
More than being succesful as a building to live in, Lever House was an icon, a symbol for the simple and elegant architecture of the century in New York. It survived because Unilever thought it's different and clean look was a good advertising tool for themselves.
A group of Japanese architects including Kurokawa was interested in introducing a new philosophy of change to the western world in 1960s. They were dreaming of utopian schemes giving birth to the notion of the city as an organism which changes at various rates. One of the architect, Kikutake wanted to become a doctor before he became an architect so the word "Metabolism" was coined for their manifesto and philosophy.
Metabolism became an extended biological analogy meant to replace the mechanical analogy of orthodox modern architecture. It compared buildings and cities to an energy process found in all of life: the cycles of change, the constant renewal and destruction of organic tissue. By clearly seperating parts of a building or city which have different rates of change, they allow certain structures to remain undisturbed when others wear out.
"We have in Japan an aesthetic of death, whereas you have an aesthetic of eternity. The Ise Shrines are rebuilt every twenty years in the same form, or spirit; whereas you try to preserve the actual Greek Temple, the original material, as if it could last for eternity."
The Nakagin Capsule Tower is the world's first capsule architecture built for actual use. Capsule architecture design, establishment of the capsule as room and insertion of the capsule into a mega-structure, expresses its contemporaneousness with other works of liberated architecture from the later 1960's, in particular England's Archigram Group, France's Paul Memon, and Yona Friedman.[1]
All the furniture is built in - the bedside control console, the stereo tape-dect and calculators - and yet the tiny space and propotions are the conventional ones. He combines steel capsules (modified from shipping containers) with all sorts of traditional components existing on the market.
The Nakagin Tower has 140 capsules, each sold for between £5.000 - £7.000 within one month of erection. A prototype was placed on the ground and inspected before people bought them. The quick sale represents a pay-off on a financial gamble since the market was not known -except roughly as that of "in-town bachelors". Actually, 30 per cent of the units have been bought by companies whose head office is in another city. When a representative companies whose head office is in another city. When a representative comes to Tokyo to negotiate he stays in the company capsule rather than a hotel as it is cheaper in the long run. Another 30 per cent are used by families as an extension to their house - as studies, playrooms, studios or dens. This unpredicted usage led Kurokawa to a new notion (and neologism) the "time-community", that is a community of individuals not based on the community", that is a community of individuals not based on the traditional determinants of place or location, but the different activities any individual would perform over time.
A businessman might inhabit five or six different places in any one day, each of them being a momentary community. This, it turns out, is again somewhat traditional since the Japanese do not usually entertain at home, but rather take guests to one the evening clubs that exists everywhere: transposed living rooms as it were.
instructions for building your own icon, Inland Steel Building
The construction of the Inland Steel Company Headquarters on the corner of Dearborn and Michigan Avenue was a significant event for the company, its architect, and the city of Chicago. As the first new skyscraper within the Loop in twenty years. It marked the beginning of the postwar revival of downtown, a revival that gathered notable momentum after the election of Richard Daley as mayor in 1955. For its architect, Bruce Graham, it was his first high-rise building and became his personal baseline statement about structure and architecture and he guarded jealously his claims for authorship.
Clarence Randall the president and chairman of the board of Inland Steel, created a planning committee under Leigh Block (1905-1987), vice-president of purchasing. Leigh Block had been acquainted with Nathaniel Owings through Chicago's civic organizations; he could hardly have been unaware of Owings' work on rewriting the city's building codes and may have known Skidmore from the Century of Progress. The project was initially assigned to Walter A. Netsch until Netsch was shifted to work on the Air Force Academy. At that point Graham took over the job.
When Graham took over the project, the first significant decision he made was shifting the support piers to the perimeter of the floors and deployed sixty-foot support piers to the perimeter of the floors and deployed sixty-foor clear-span girders to support the floors. The floors thus offered open space of 58 feet x 178 feet, what inland referred to as the "totally useful interior". Thus decission, in effect a logical continuation of the seperation of service and functional towers, was critical for the ultimate aesthetic effect.
The construction of the Inland Steel Company Headquarters on the corner of Dearborn and Michigan Avenue was a significant event for the company, its architect, and the city of Chicago. As the first new skyscraper within the Loop in twenty years. It marked the beginning of the postwar revival of downtown, a revival that gathered notable momentum after the election of Richard Daley as mayor in 1955. For its architect, Bruce Graham, it was his first high-rise building and became his personal baseline statement about structure and architecture and he guarded jealously his claims for authorship.
Clarence Randall the president and chairman of the board of Inland Steel, created a planning committee under Leigh Block (1905-1987), vice-president of purchasing. Leigh Block had been acquainted with Nathaniel Owings through Chicago's civic organizations; he could hardly have been unaware of Owings' work on rewriting the city's building codes and may have known Skidmore from the Century of Progress. The project was initially assigned to Walter A. Netsch until Netsch was shifted to work on the Air Force Academy. At that point Graham took over the job.
When Graham took over the project, the first significant decision he made was shifting the support piers to the perimeter of the floors and deployed sixty-foot support piers to the perimeter of the floors and deployed sixty-foor clear-span girders to support the floors. The floors thus offered open space of 58 feet x 178 feet, what inland referred to as the "totally useful interior". Thus decission, in effect a logical continuation of the seperation of service and functional towers, was critical for the ultimate aesthetic effect.
The popularity of Inland Steel, like Lever House, has endured. The bright clean steel surfaces and comparatively modest scale of the building is a natural attraction. Inland Steel has become, in the words of the AIA Guide for Chicago, "increasingly engaging" as the neighborhood has evolved. For the public the identification of the client with the surfaces of the building was always especially appealing.The Inland Steel Building was the first modern glass skyscraper in downtown Chicago and brought the international style of architecture to the city. The building is significant for its association with Inland Steel Company and the burgeoning 20th-century steel industry.
The Inland Steel Building was designated a Chicago Landmark on October 7, 1998 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 18, 2009 by the National Park Service.
No building is more closely identified with SOM (Skidmore Owings & Merrill) than Lever House.It was, and remains more than fifty years after its completion, the building on which a significant portion of their early reputation is founded.
It was built for Lever Brothers, the American arm of the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, a manufacturer of cleaning products. Charles Luckman (left) trained as an architect was appointed to head Lever Brothers. When he moved the headquarters from Massachusetts to New York City, he appointed Gordon Bunshaft (right) and SOM as the new headquarters' architects.
"The building of tomorrow which promises to set the pattern for the city of tomorrow" SOM solicited testimonial opinions from well-known architects to bolster the building's impact.
When Luckman hired SOM, he expressed his vision of the building in negatives.
From his autobiography:
"I did not want the building to use all the square footage allowed by the city's building codes. I did not want tenants in the new building: it was to house Lever and only Lever. Let's design the building with materials that emphasize the most modern American technology. I do not want a bank or shops or anything else on the street level. I want pedastrians to be able to walk through open garden on Park Avenue and into the glass-enclosed lobby of the building and to feel that Lever Brothers is saying 'Welcome' to all the people"
Lever House did not take over all of Owings' ideas about an "ideal" office tower. Retail shops were not included at the sidewalk level because surveys showed that Park Avenue was not an active shopping street and that the income could not justify the capital investment.
The first plan from the left shows the street level.Although this sounded like a wasteful investment, what convinced the Unilever was the possibility of "millions and millions of dollars of free advertising for Lever Brothers". In this respect, few buildings have ever returned results to their investors so handsomely.
The most impressive of the gadgets at Lever House was the electronically powered window washing machine hanging from the roof. Two men could wash the entire building in six days! Lever justified it as an economy and as a demostration of Lever products. In a "Fact Sheet" circulated in 1952 public relations officials wrote:"The conventional building materials, stone and brick, gather grime, soot and soil and give them up grudgingly and expensively. On the other hand, glass comes clean in seconds. So Lever House was built of glass and stainless steel, also readily cleaned. For years Lever Brothers laboratory men have dedicated their research to getting things clean quickly and economically. This economical principle for washing not only the windows but the entire outside of the building had never been used before"
Although Lever House earned excellent returns on its inverstment in terms of publicity, the building did not use space economically. Over the years, as the benefits of publicity decreased and the value of Park Avenue real estate increased, there were proposals for its alteration and even for its demolition.
In the early flush of post-modernist sarcasm the critic Charles Jencks dismissed Lever House as "background wallpaper and businessman's vernacular" Landmark designation in 1983 ensured it's survival.
