"All but the most vainglorious architects imagine that their buildings will change in some small way after completion. Few declare from the outset that the majority of their structures can and should be replaced after a few decades. When Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa designed Tokyo's Nakagin Capsule Tower in 1972, his intent was to create a building that would adapt with the future."
"Subsequent decades didn't result in healthy metabolic processes; there was decay but no regeneration. The tower in Ginza was eventually deemed too expensive to repair. It was torn down in 2022 and will be replaced by a luxury hotel. Demolition, in this case, involved not a single implosion but the more incremental removal by crane of each of the original capsules, which at least made retaining a few of them easier."
Most architects expect modest postcompletion changes, but few design for wholesale replacement. Kisho Kurokawa's 1972 Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo used 140 steel-framed prefabricated capsules attached to two concrete-and-steel cores to enable removal and replacement. The building embodied Japanese Metabolism, which treated architecture as evolving, organic systems. Over time the tower suffered decay without replacement, and repair costs led to demolition in 2022. Demolition removed capsules incrementally by crane, enabling salvage. A preservation project obtained 23 units to cover demolition costs. Surviving capsules were dispersed globally to museums, galleries, hotels, and other uses.
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