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The Impermanent Icon
The year started with the research for two post World War 2 buildings built in the two ends of the world. They are both not designed as permanent, final product. One is the Inland Steel in Chicago and the other one is the Nakagin Tower in Tokyo.
Inland Steel by SOM provides flexibility and accepts the impermanence of the programme in the building by having column and service free open plans. These 13 floors connect to a service and circulation providing core - tower. On the other side, as a completely different approach, in Nakagin Tower for Kisho Kurokawa impermanence is about the physical replacement of the residential capsules in time. These capsules can be seen equal to the column and service free floor plans of the Inland Steel building.
In Nakagin Tower, the room layout is very specifically defined, furniture are not movable while in Inland Steel, the space is nothing but an empty box.
While the SOM's open plan takes its origins from the principles of modern architecture that we are all very familiar with in the western side of the world, Nakagin Tower takes its roots from the metabolist movement of Japan formed by a group of architects and designers.
The metabolist group was active in 1960's only for a decade. In 1970's the movement was disowned by most the founder members and the only representative left from the group was their youngest member, Kisko Kurokawa.
Their ambition was to create a building or a city that one doesn't have to destroy the whole structure every time one part breaks down.
Impermanent Tower
Nakagin Tower construction was finalized in 1972. The building is formed around a steel core, where the plug in living units - capsules - are hanging from. In September 1972, in a month's time all 140 capsules were sold out. The people who bought these capsules were in-town bachelors, families and corporations. Families used these places as an extension to their own houses, for their guests and corporations were finding it cheaper use the capsules as hotel rooms than paying for a regular hotel room.
However, these capsules were too much like a prison cell for their inhabitants. They were only 8 square meters in size and were designed for a single person to live in. A capsule would not even share its walls with their neighbours. The moment a capsule owner steps out of their personal space, he would be only facing a 1m wide, dark staircase and a lift.
In contradiction to this very lonely condition created, the rooms would face each other at many points from the large circular windows creating a huge privacy issue for inhabitants.
Capsules survived for 20 years just like Kurokawa's projection. They were not designed to be maintained, preserved forever therefore they were falling apart in year 2000.
The internal space of the capsules, with the built-in equipment and furniture was another failure.
One man owning a capsule removed his bed and pinned his favourite paintings on the plastic built in storage spaces, threw his own classical looking chairs and a tea table. A young man got rid of everything in the interior and built his own bookshelf and placed a sofa-bed. One woman removed the insufficient yellow lighting, replaced it with a really big white light source and brought in a large fridge for herself.
But my question at this point is; can Nakagin Tower really represent what metabolists were trying to achieve? Is looking at Nakagin Tower enough for understanding the ambition behind the metabolist movement in Japan?
There were very interesting ideas bringing six men together in one house for discussions that lasts until the mornings.
One metabolist, Kikutake's family was a well known landlord family providing infrastructure for many. His house was hosting many people for different events. This kind of shared infrastructure and shared spaces disappeared in Japan after the new land laws that did not allow one single person's ownership for a plot in order to slow down the development of Japan after the World War 2. As a response to this new law, Kikutake was supporting the idea of artificial land platforms that allows denser developments independent from the city plots.
Another metabolist architect, Kawazoe said once: "Metabolism is not something cooked up by architects and designers for fun". All five architects and one industrial designer were traumatised by the effects of the war. They all saw their cities destroyed and did not believe anything can last forever. They strongly believed in the impermanence of the materialistic world.
In a Time of Impermanency
We are in the shock of one of the biggest economical crisis of the last century. Giant music stores, banks are falling apart and closing down their branches on the most popular streets. Big names of architecture lost most of their commissions in the Middle East and shrunk their number of employees immediately.
There are no bombings, there are no military invasions but there's a physical environment dissolving every passing day around us. Architecture is too slow, architecture is too expensive.
How can we respond to the this constantly mutating world in an efficient and attractive way?
Site
Istanbul is one of the most impermanent cities in the world. It is a multi-centred metropolis that would not have a OS map like system at any point. The business district keeps migrating towards the north with an incredible speed, almost every decade. The consumption of the land is marked with the migrating icons. Two bridges to cross the Bosphorus soon to be joined by a third one, two stadiums of Galatasaray, one under construction in the north. The city keeps replicating itself leaving less popular city centres behind.
In this north migrating city, construction of the twin towers of Tatlici is being paused for 15 years and Cevahir Mall construction took 25 years to be completed. The unstable economical and political conditions forces us to look for new ways of building in cities like Istanbul and by the time they are finalized, the focus of the city is moved towards north and the building is already unpopular.
Also because of the earthquakes, Istanbul has been an impermanent city since Constantinopolis. The most important icon of the city, Hagia Sophia and it's dome was rebuilt more than two times in the history.
Metabolist idea of gradually developing buildings can be ideally tested in a city like Istanbul.
The modern Sisli municipality in north hosts the old and new business districts and it is developed on the sides of a main road called Buyukdere. The linear development of this district is caused by the geographical limitations the city provides. Because of it's non-flat topography. The city could never have a grid system. This topography forces the city to be denser on the sides of the main street and be linear.
Developing Form
The typical stacked on top of eachother floorplates of tower would not be a developable form. As an anti capsule system, allowing maximum neighbourhood, the chains became my main interest.
The programme is mainly residential,
The year started with the research for two post World War 2 buildings built in the two ends of the world. They are both not designed as permanent, final product. One is the Inland Steel in Chicago and the other one is the Nakagin Tower in Tokyo.
Inland Steel by SOM provides flexibility and accepts the impermanence of the programme in the building by having column and service free open plans. These 13 floors connect to a service and circulation providing core - tower. On the other side, as a completely different approach, in Nakagin Tower for Kisho Kurokawa impermanence is about the physical replacement of the residential capsules in time. These capsules can be seen equal to the column and service free floor plans of the Inland Steel building.
In Nakagin Tower, the room layout is very specifically defined, furniture are not movable while in Inland Steel, the space is nothing but an empty box.
While the SOM's open plan takes its origins from the principles of modern architecture that we are all very familiar with in the western side of the world, Nakagin Tower takes its roots from the metabolist movement of Japan formed by a group of architects and designers.
The metabolist group was active in 1960's only for a decade. In 1970's the movement was disowned by most the founder members and the only representative left from the group was their youngest member, Kisko Kurokawa.
Their ambition was to create a building or a city that one doesn't have to destroy the whole structure every time one part breaks down.
Impermanent Tower
Nakagin Tower construction was finalized in 1972. The building is formed around a steel core, where the plug in living units - capsules - are hanging from. In September 1972, in a month's time all 140 capsules were sold out. The people who bought these capsules were in-town bachelors, families and corporations. Families used these places as an extension to their own houses, for their guests and corporations were finding it cheaper use the capsules as hotel rooms than paying for a regular hotel room.
However, these capsules were too much like a prison cell for their inhabitants. They were only 8 square meters in size and were designed for a single person to live in. A capsule would not even share its walls with their neighbours. The moment a capsule owner steps out of their personal space, he would be only facing a 1m wide, dark staircase and a lift.
In contradiction to this very lonely condition created, the rooms would face each other at many points from the large circular windows creating a huge privacy issue for inhabitants.
Capsules survived for 20 years just like Kurokawa's projection. They were not designed to be maintained, preserved forever therefore they were falling apart in year 2000.
The internal space of the capsules, with the built-in equipment and furniture was another failure.
One man owning a capsule removed his bed and pinned his favourite paintings on the plastic built in storage spaces, threw his own classical looking chairs and a tea table. A young man got rid of everything in the interior and built his own bookshelf and placed a sofa-bed. One woman removed the insufficient yellow lighting, replaced it with a really big white light source and brought in a large fridge for herself.
But my question at this point is; can Nakagin Tower really represent what metabolists were trying to achieve? Is looking at Nakagin Tower enough for understanding the ambition behind the metabolist movement in Japan?
There were very interesting ideas bringing six men together in one house for discussions that lasts until the mornings.
One metabolist, Kikutake's family was a well known landlord family providing infrastructure for many. His house was hosting many people for different events. This kind of shared infrastructure and shared spaces disappeared in Japan after the new land laws that did not allow one single person's ownership for a plot in order to slow down the development of Japan after the World War 2. As a response to this new law, Kikutake was supporting the idea of artificial land platforms that allows denser developments independent from the city plots.
Another metabolist architect, Kawazoe said once: "Metabolism is not something cooked up by architects and designers for fun". All five architects and one industrial designer were traumatised by the effects of the war. They all saw their cities destroyed and did not believe anything can last forever. They strongly believed in the impermanence of the materialistic world.
In a Time of Impermanency
We are in the shock of one of the biggest economical crisis of the last century. Giant music stores, banks are falling apart and closing down their branches on the most popular streets. Big names of architecture lost most of their commissions in the Middle East and shrunk their number of employees immediately.
There are no bombings, there are no military invasions but there's a physical environment dissolving every passing day around us. Architecture is too slow, architecture is too expensive.
How can we respond to the this constantly mutating world in an efficient and attractive way?
Site
Istanbul is one of the most impermanent cities in the world. It is a multi-centred metropolis that would not have a OS map like system at any point. The business district keeps migrating towards the north with an incredible speed, almost every decade. The consumption of the land is marked with the migrating icons. Two bridges to cross the Bosphorus soon to be joined by a third one, two stadiums of Galatasaray, one under construction in the north. The city keeps replicating itself leaving less popular city centres behind.
In this north migrating city, construction of the twin towers of Tatlici is being paused for 15 years and Cevahir Mall construction took 25 years to be completed. The unstable economical and political conditions forces us to look for new ways of building in cities like Istanbul and by the time they are finalized, the focus of the city is moved towards north and the building is already unpopular.
Also because of the earthquakes, Istanbul has been an impermanent city since Constantinopolis. The most important icon of the city, Hagia Sophia and it's dome was rebuilt more than two times in the history.
Metabolist idea of gradually developing buildings can be ideally tested in a city like Istanbul.
The modern Sisli municipality in north hosts the old and new business districts and it is developed on the sides of a main road called Buyukdere. The linear development of this district is caused by the geographical limitations the city provides. Because of it's non-flat topography. The city could never have a grid system. This topography forces the city to be denser on the sides of the main street and be linear.
Developing Form
The typical stacked on top of eachother floorplates of tower would not be a developable form. As an anti capsule system, allowing maximum neighbourhood, the chains became my main interest.
The programme is mainly residential,
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
