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The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

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Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#61

Post by FabHK »

Aeolun wrote: post #40
nitwit005 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From that article (edit: second article): > The economical miracle can be divided into four stages: the recovery (1946–1954), the high increase (1955–1972), the steady increase (1972–1992), and the low increase (1992–2017). The period of highest growth ended in the 70s, which ended some of the optimism of that period.

If I remember right the steady increase was ended by a huge asset bubble.

Yes, the Nikkei 225 still hasn't reached its 1989 peak, see the graph:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikkei_225

(Though, mind you, a price index, not total return, so not including dividends, IIRC)

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#62

Post by masswerk »

buran77 wrote: post #54
masswerk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. In 1969, you could watch a Harrier jet hover the water and shoot out of sight and several emancipatory legislations were a direct result of these era. (In fact, you could watch Apollo 16 going to the moon and celebrate the equal employment act passed just the previous month.) And it's also the 1970s, when awareness rose for environmental issues (like leaded gasoline and many more). Regarding pixels, well, there w…

The view OP presents is a bit grim though. Most of the real "modernity" of the '70s was not something regular people would enjoy. Going to the Moon, or the Concorde were no different from today's fusion experiments, including the fact that they were based heavily on "earlier work". Perhaps society decided to turn that progress into something a regular person could benefit from. Think EVs, or a network of internet sat…

The observations on modernity are important. In a sense, future — as in this optimistic, curious interest and anticipation — is a thing of the past. We have replaced art by engineering (for the most part with a rather short term perspective) and lost emotions on the way. I think, this is one of the reasons for the retro trend we've seen in the last decade. – I also think, the 1970s were actually already a bit late to this, as they were also the decade of a generation on wait, rather apt to indulge in personal matters. (Are the 2020s the 1970s of the post-futuristic age?)

Regarding the the article, metabolism occupies a special spot: it's futuristic, full of anticipation, both theoretical and practically minded, and vitally combines elements from both art and engineering approaches.

Edit/PS, regarding art vs engineering: And in the arts engineering is called curating… ;-)

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#63

Post by FabHK »

knolax wrote: post #19
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

Travelling to the 70s must feel like going to the future: these futuristic capsule buildings existed, supersonic air travel was commonplace, and there were humans travelling to the moon. The epitome of modernity these days is how fast your car videos can load.

I've gotten into camping and climbing recently and every time I walk into an REI I'm pretty amazed at how different the gear is from when I was younger. Might not be as flashy but there certainly has been a great deal of improvement in pretty much every consumer good there is.

Indeed. Got a new bicycle recently, and most components (saddle, light, brakes, gears, etc.) are better in many small ways and large.

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#64

Post by WJW »

tinus_hn wrote: post #51
ekianjo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asbestos is mainly a concern in particulate form and therefore more for construction workers. Staying one night will have no impact on your health.

Asbestos is a game of chance. While of course there’s plenty of chance nothing will happen there’s also a small chance one fiber gets loose and ends up in a bad place and causes you to die a pretty miserable death.

This is like saying that puddles are a game of chance because you could spontaneously faint when standing close to them and drown. It is theoretically not impossible, but it is also not a risk that you should be worrying about in your daily life.

Asbestos is an extremely stable compound, which is the entire reason it was being used as fire resistant material.

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#65

Post by WJW »

Angostura wrote: post #60
rodgerd wrote: post #23

I think that "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the metabolists failed because the buildings they produced weren’t metabolic enough to cope with the ever-changing needs of the city’s inhabitants. Surely, preservation of their work as some kind of cultural relic would be the last thing that the young radicals of the late ’60s and early ’70s would have wanted." is the key quote. I'm sad to see an interesting buil…

From the article, it seem like the main failure was in execution. The pods were designed to be replaceable, swapped out regularly as needs changed. In practice, swapping out a single pod was impossible, due to the construction. For some reason, I'm really sad to see this go. I remember it being all over the UK media when I was a kid.

I think that

> swapped out regularly as needs changed

was the key design mistake, because it glosses over the fact that people get attached to things for sentimental reasons. Even if it were easier to swap out pods, I bet that some people would stubbornly remain in their older pods "because it is the pod I grew up in" for example.

Designers in all sorts of fields (even software) often fall for this fallacy, because it would just be so much more elegant if humans conformed to your vision for the world instead of the other way around.

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#66

Post by GuB-42 »

tinus_hn wrote: post #51
ekianjo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asbestos is mainly a concern in particulate form and therefore more for construction workers. Staying one night will have no impact on your health.

Asbestos is a game of chance. While of course there’s plenty of chance nothing will happen there’s also a small chance one fiber gets loose and ends up in a bad place and causes you to die a pretty miserable death.

True, you can also get struck by lightening on your way to the room, the asbestos may also save your life from a fire.

Everything is a game of chance. You can quantify your chances of dying with micromorts, it is a good way to put things into perspective.

Dying of cancer because you spend a night in a capsule containing asbestos is, I believe, so ridiculously low that you might as well worry about being killed by a dog swimming with a gun in his mouth when you go to the beach. I mean, unless you are doing things like taking an angle grinder to the capsule, something the owner might object to.

Really, asbestos is mostly an occupational hazard. Once it is in place, the risks are low.

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#67

Post by pfdietz »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #55
rbg246 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but this is my point is there are great reasons why concorde failed but equally it's technology was not enough of progress to overcome the fact that 747s could do things at much greater scale and more economically. The reach of aeroplane travel is far more impressive now than flying under a 100 people at supersonic speeds. I also dispute that there was mass transport plans - the total passenger load was tiny. Not…

Concorde failed because of politics, not technology. The US wanted to make way for its own SST project so it limited Concorde's access to the US market. A Concorde B variant with an even longer range and quieter engines was already being developed, and airlines were very interested in it. if the US market had been more open it's likely other markets would have followed suit. Once it was stabilised in the market other…

Concorde failed because of the technology. It was hugely expensive and consumed mass amounts of fuel (13x the fuel per passenger of a 747-200). It used 2 tons of fuel just to taxi to the runway for takeoff!

I dispute that airlines were actually interested in a Concorde B. The economic problems of supersonic flight would have remained.

There's a reason Boeing abandoned any pretense of interest in SST after Congress declined to fund it.

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#68

Post by bregma »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

Travelling to the 70s must feel like going to the future: these futuristic capsule buildings existed, supersonic air travel was commonplace, and there were humans travelling to the moon. The epitome of modernity these days is how fast your car videos can load.

In the 1970s we lived under the shadow of The Bomb. We assumed our future was as glowing cinders under literally leaden skies.

Now, the future in the 1960s was wonderful. Spaceships! Atomic-powered flying cars! Jet travel to anywhere in the world! Air raid drills with duck and cover! That past had a future!

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#69

Post by teel »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #49
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

Travelling to the 70s must feel like going to the future: these futuristic capsule buildings existed, supersonic air travel was commonplace, and there were humans travelling to the moon. The epitome of modernity these days is how fast your car videos can load.

Edit: CAT videos. I meant to say cat videos :)

Heh, thanks for correcting the typo, that saved my Friday afternoon :)

I had not heard car videos are so popular nowadays that their download speed can be used as a measure of modernity. But actually, that did not surprise me any more, more like the opposite. I feel that the older I get (I was born in 76), the more I see and hear things related to computers, music, media that apparently are very popular now I have never heard of. Sometimes it feels like I'm forever stuck in the 90's in a way. I mean, music was best in 90s-early 2000s, All you bases belonged to us as far as the best memes go and so on. But then again, with the technology in my hands today, I wouldn't change it to 90's junk in a million years.

Re: The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

#70

Post by eru »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #2

Travelling to the 70s must feel like going to the future: these futuristic capsule buildings existed, supersonic air travel was commonplace, and there were humans travelling to the moon. The epitome of modernity these days is how fast your car videos can load.

> [...] supersonic air travel was commonplace, [...]

It was more commonplace than now, but flying in general was much, much more expensive, and supersonic travel even more.

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