RARE BOOK: Noritaka Minami 1972 Nakagin Capsule Tower

Completed in the year 1972, Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower is one of the few visionary proposals realized by an avant-garde architectural movement called Metabolism. An experimental apartment complex designed with 140 removable capsules, this building in Tokyo embodies the future of urban living as envisioned by Kurokawa at that moment in postwar Japan. More importantly, it is a reminder of a future that was never realized in society at large and exists as an architectural anachronism within the city. In recent years, the building has faced the threat of demolition to make way for a more conventional structure. In the book 1972, Noritaka Minami uses photography to document the current state of individual capsules as a response to their potential disappearance. The photographs examine what became of a building that first opened as a radical prototype for a new mode of living in post-industrial society and how this vision of the future appears in retrospect.

Hardcover 24 x 28 cm 100 pages 54 color and 1 b/w illustrations English Out of print ISBN 978-3-86828-548-2 2015