ABSTRACT

In April 2007, a report from Architectural Record drew worldwide attention to a building in Japan: Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower is scheduled to be demolished.1 This news astonished many architects and historians because Nakagin Capsule Tower is not only an iconic work of Kurokawa, but has been widely acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of postwar modern architecture in Japan. The possible demolition of the Nakagin Building brought the Metabolist movement back under the spotlight nearly half a century after its inauguration.