Metabolism

Metabolism is a Japanese movement that designed buildings and cities to change and grow over time. Its typical scheme is a permanent core or megastructure (a very large frame) holding elevators, stairs and services, with smaller units such as rooms or capsules attached to it that can be added or replaced. Built examples are mostly concrete, with service towers and repeated prefabricated modules left visible on the exterior.

Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo (1970-1972) had 140 prefabricated capsules, each 2.5 by 2.5 by 4 meters with a round window, attached to two concrete towers of 11 and 13 stories. Kenzo Tange's Yamanashi Press and Broadcasting Centre in Kofu (1966) has tall cylindrical concrete service cores with office floors spanning between them. Kiyonori Kikutake's Sky House in Tokyo (1958), his own home, is a single square living space raised off the ground, with kitchen and bathroom units designed to be moved.

The movement was announced at the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960 with the manifesto Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism. Its founding members were the architects Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa, Fumihiko Maki and Masato Otaka and the critic Noboru Kawazoe. Kenzo Tange acted as a mentor rather than a member, and his 1960 Plan for Tokyo Bay proposed a city extending over the water. The group cited the Ise Shrine, rebuilt every 20 years, as a precedent for planned renewal.

The movement peaked at Expo '70 in Osaka, where Tange made the master plan and Kikutake and Kurokawa designed pavilions. After the 1973 oil crisis the members turned from megastructures to smaller projects, and several took commissions in the Middle East and Africa. The Nakagin Capsule Tower was demolished in April 2022. Of its 140 capsules, 23 were saved, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and M+ in Hong Kong each hold one.