This Pod Hotel of 1972 Offers a Glimpse at the Future That Never Was

Few cities evoke ideas of the future like Tokyo. When the Nakagin Capsule Tower was built in 1972, it was supposed to mark the Dawn of the Capsule Age. At the time, Japan was preparing for explosive growth fueled by a new economy built on technology and manufacturing. A group of architects from the so-called Metabolism school of architecture, championed by the tower’s architect Kisho Kurokawa, believed new structures should be made to grow and adapt organically with the society they served.

It was a future that never came to be, largely for economic reasons, and the tower became an anachronism, a one-of-a-kind structure that was an eyesore to some and an intriguing totem of unmet idealism to others. 1972 is photographer Noritaka Minami’s meditation on this contentious building, which some have been pushing to remove from the city, and the future its builders imagined.

“Documenting it as a photograph is, in part, a response to this potential that it may disappear,” says Minami.

The building is made up of 140 capsules, concrete modules attached to a fixed central structure. They were intended to be replaced every 25 years as the needs of the community shifted over time. Not a single pod has been switched out, the only real changes in the building coming from the drifting in and out of its tenants. The pods’ futuristic constrained quarters, worthy of Korben Dallas, feature inset appliances and a giant porthole window like any good sci-fi abode.

“It’s an interesting aesthetic, it points to spaceships, it could also point to cruise boats,” says Minami. “This idea of a machine or technology-driven building suggests movement and travel.”

Although layers of grime and chipped concrete may imply a lack of activity, Nakagin Tower is very much alive and always evolving within. Minami estimates that as many as 75 percent of the pods are currently occupied. Some are used for full- and part-time homes, others for offices and other varieties of purposes. For a homogenous building, the uses it gets put to are pretty diverse.

Minami says that entering a space which was built on such a potent idea of the future is physically affecting. “I contemplate the space while I’m there, I hope by creating these images, others will contemplate this future that never happened.”

The dead-on, street style shooting approach lets the spaces, and the evidence of their occupants (or lack thereof) speak for themselves. “Things are so accentuated because they’re such small spaces, because residents change over time, spaces fill up, empty again, stain marks form, are washed out — there’s a sense of flow, of movement, it’s not a static entity.”

The ideas being explored by Kurokawa still have relevance, as cities like New York and Vancouver experiment with conservatively sized, modularly built apartment buildings to meet exploding population demands. Despite the strong feelings and historical connotations surrounding the building, it hasn’t been recognized as historical structure by Japanese authorities.

“Historical preservation isn’t necessarily about something that’s a pleasant memory,” says Minami. “If this disappears, there’s no other building like it.”

All photos: Noritaka Minami