The Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo’s Ginza district was the world’s first example of capsule architecture, designed by Kisho Kurokawa and born from the Metabolist movement launched at the 1960 World Design Conference in Tokyo. The Metabolists argued that cities should behave like living organisms, growing and replacing their parts, a hopeful answer to the destruction of World War II. After Kurokawa’s capsule pavilion drew crowds at the 1970 Osaka Expo, a businessman whose company was named Nakagin hired him, and the tower was finished in 1972: two concrete and steel cores of 11 and 13 floors carrying 140 capsules.

Each capsule was built in a converted shipping container factory 280 miles away and arrived fully fitted with a stove, refrigerator, television, reel to reel tape deck, and a one piece plastic bathroom, then was hung from the core by four high tension bolts. The capsules were meant to be swapped every 25 years, but not one ever was. Crane access in dense Ginza, 140 separate owners, and a 2006 estimate of 6.2 million yen per capsule made renewal impossible, and the building leaked, carried asbestos, and lost hot water in 2010. Owners voted in 2007 to demolish, Kurokawa died that year, and after delays from the 2008 recession, demolition began in April 2022.

• Capsule dimensions of about 8 by 8 by 13 feet, based on a traditional tea room
• The deliberately asymmetrical towers, reflecting Japanese aesthetics
• A digital archive built from laser scans and more than 20,000 drone photos
• The 23 capsules saved and sent to SFMOMA, M+ in Hong Kong, and MoMA in New York
• Capsule House K, a smaller Kurokawa building still standing and rentable on Airbnb