Metabolism in architecture
--------------------------
About a month back I visited a rather unusual and eclectic museum,
which included a small room at the ended dedicated to a 1980s
"Utopian architecture" project called "The Tube" (die Röhre) by the
German architect Günther Eckert. Eckert was a real architect who
designed real buildings which actually got built in the real world,
but The Tube, as far as I can tell (it's not very well documented
online, it would seem, especially not in English), remained entirely
a conceptual project, just a large collection of plans and sketches
and mock-ups painted over photographs. Honestly I'm not sure there
was ever a realistic expectation on behalf of anyone, even Eckert
himself, that it would ever be more than that, rather than just a
though experiment. The Tube was very unlikely to ever get build
because it was, you see, a truly gigantic enclosed tube encircling
the entire planet, in which of all of humanity was supposed to live
and work.
This post is not about the Tube. But part of the Tube exhibit
was a collage of adjacent weird conceptual architectural projects,
and my eye was caught there by a few photos of something called the
Nakagin Capsule Tower, built in Tokyo at the beginning of the 70s.
I made a note of the name with the intent to read up on it later, and
through this I learned about the Metabolism architectural movement,
which s what this post *is* about.
I should say upfront that I am not really into or knowledgeable
about conceptual architecture. The closest encounters I've had with
it are through my readings on US 60s counter-culture hippy stuff.
That scene was big into geodesic domes, heavily influenced by the
charismatic Buckminster Fuller, as well as, somewhat surprisingly
from the perspective of today's lasting impressions of the hippies,
embracing modern wonder materials for building with. Quick, cheap,
easy DIY housing for the masses was the happy touch-feely motivation
behind this dalliance with tech-tech. My main window on all of
this is Lloy'd Kahn (editor of the Whole Earth Catalog's "Shelter"
sections), both through his famous book "Shelter", which I have
a copy of, and his wonderful retrospective online work. Based on
decades of personal experience designing, building and living in
domes as well as collecting and distributing educational material
for people wanting to do the same, Lloyd came to realise the whole
high-tech time idea was "smart but not wise". If you are at all
interested in this stuff, I highly recommend some of his essays[1]
on domes, one of which bears that name. Lloyd is still very much
into the idea of homes where the designer(s), builder(s), owner(s)
and occupant(s) are all one and the same person or group of people,
but these days has a strong preference for simple, natural materials,
adores wood, advocates the use of salvaged/recovered wood rather than
new timber, and advocates conventional rectilinear building shapes
as, surprise, actually being tremendously practical. This transition
resonates with me a lot, so when I look back on high-tech modernist
architectural ideas from last century it's necessarily with a kind
of scepticism, but a respectful and appreciative and open-minded
one that is looking for good ideas which can be "backported" to a
more primitivist mindset.
The Metabolism movement[2] was founded by a group of Japanese
architects, right at the end of the 50s, and is inspired by (amongst
other things, but this is the idea I find most interesting/appealing)
the biological notion of continuous renewal and organic growth,
and the recycling of raw materials from old structures to build
new ones. This idea has deep roots in Japan. There are a number
of wooden Shinto shrines, most famously the Ise Grand Shrine[3], which
are repeatedly and continually rebuilt in a Ship of Theseus fashion.
This constant rebuilding is partially religiously motivated, but it
has practical benefits, too. Each cycle of renewal takes about 20
years, and it provides an opportunity for older and more experienced
builders to pass on techniques and knowledge to the next generation,
and ensures that there is always somebody alive who has first-hand
knowledge of how and why any given aspect of the shrine as it
currently stands was built, with nothing ever being lost to history.
Small adaptations to the design can be made to reflect changes
in the availability of materials and shifting usage practices.
I think this is really very cool.
Perhaps the clearest translation of these ideals into a modern
framework is the Nakagin Capsule Tower[4], whose photo sent me down
this rabbit hole in the first place. Designed by Kisho Kurokawa, one
of the founders of Metabolism, this building consisted of two towers,
side by side, with a number of small "capsules", intended as office
spaces or minimalist accommodation for travelling workers, quite
literally plugged into each tower. The idea was that the towers,
which housed staircases and the basic utility infrastructure, would
be permanent parts of the building, while individual capsules could
be added, removed, refurbished or modified over the years on an
as-needed basis in response to changing needs. Basically something
like a modular apartment building. While a nice idea in principle,
this never actually happened, not even once. All 140 of the original
capsules installed when the tower was first built between 1970 and
1972 remained installed without any repairs or upgrades all the
way up until the tower was demolished just last year. At least
one capsule was rescued for future use as a museum exhibit.
I don't know why the Nagakin tower didn't work out in practice
like it was supposed to, whether it was an issue of practicalities,
or expense, or resistance to the idea by people living and working
in the tower. Maybe it's one of those ideas which looks good on
paper but doesn't work out in reality, or perhaps it really would
have worked out if just one or two things had been different. But I
like the ideas embodied by it, and by other Metabolist projects, too.
Ideas like making deconstruction and reconstruction just as easy and
economical as initial construction, of allowing a building to change
its form gracefully and incrementally over time in a responsive way,
and of encouraging the reuse of parts of buildings or raw materials
in new projects. There's not much architecture-specific about it,
and you can easily translate the ideas to e.g. electronic hardware
(building circuits up in a modular fashion from generic "jelly
bean" logic ICs vs designing massively integrated ASICs) and no
doubt software, too, although crossing the material-to-immaterial
boundary probably warrants caution.
Anyway, if this is at all interesting to you, there's more to be
read online, and in particular it's not hard to find a PDF scan[5] of
the out-of-print 1977 book "Metabolism in Architecture" by Kurokawa,
which goes into much greater detail about the movement's history and
philosophy. Incidentally, that book is increasingly characteristic
of the online content which excites me most and gets most of my
attention these days, which is pretty ironic. The internet was
supposed to be "the information super-highway", but honestly,
I rarely feel more super informed online than when I stumble upon
a samizdat copy of some very specific book or magazine or article
from last century exploring some largely overlooked idea or person
or project which I find interesting. These artefacts are typically
entirely non-interactive, mostly text, often black-and-white,
sometimes quite low quality, but are nevertheless positively bursting
with genuine cognitive value. They are not, generally speaking,
difficult to find if you know they exist and are actively looking
for them, but they are rarely well promoted, and there's rarely a
sense of permanence when you do find them. They're often hosted
on the kind of site which looks like it could disappear any month
(though in the case of my provided link here, monoskop.org looks
delightfully non-sketchy). This gives them them the feeling of
precious gems and makes me want to horde them, and honestly, with
the price and physical density of storage these days, why not?
[1]
https://www.shelterpub.com/domes
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolism_(architecture)
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Grand_Shrine
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower
[5]
https://monoskop.org/images/9/94/Kurokawa_Kisho_Metabolism_in_Architecture_1977.pdf
