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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

#71

Post by eru »

masswerk wrote: post #62
buran77 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you mean replaced? There's more art than ever, isn't there?

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

#72

Post by eru »

pydry wrote: post #57
rbg246 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a total of 20 supersonic airlines wasn't exactly common place. And spending 1.5% of your GDP to send like ten people to the moon probably isn't that great an achievement from a cost benefit analysis (I know there will be fierce disagreement). Not taking away from how amazing those things are but we have billions of computers that connect most people in the world together which in my opinion just insanely amazi…

The computers and communication tech you love were developed as a result of the moon landing. Loads of stuff like that entered the public domain. That's apart from improvements in digital imaging, large scale manufacturing, material sciences and flight control that were derived from the project. Moreover, it was a longer term investment in humankind becoming a spacefaring species - something that will be necessary fo…

You are missing opportunity costs.

All the resources that went into the moonlanding could have gone into something else. Eg could have stayed in private hands.

For a different example:

Yes, in the real world WW2 sort-of gave us computers. But IBM (and similar companies) would have invented electronic general purpose computers anyway, and probably sooner, if there hadn't been a war going on.

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

#73

Post by eru »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #56
rbg246 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale is everything though - great technology is nothing without reach

Politics is everything. We have wristwatch and pocket supercomputers with access to a global network. But many people also live in a far more precarious economy, the global network is far too much a source of poor-quality or tainted information and toxic social experiences, monitoring and manipulation of all kinds are pervasive, and a compulsory personal ethic of branding, consumption, and selling is far more prevale…

> But many people also live in a far more precarious economy, [...]

What? Global inequality has dropped through the floor compared to the 70s. People in India and China used to starve, now they have smartphones.

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

#74

Post by eru »

joe_the_user wrote: post #36
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, plane travel was rare and expensive, with high quality service and everything sparkling. Long distance phone calls were exciting. There was much less future, it was less advanced but it felt more special, yes.

Part of the reason air travel was rare and expensive was regulation.

De-regulation of air travel made it cheap and commonplace.

See eg https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AirlineDeregulation.html

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

#75

Post by eru »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #30
kiba wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, we're working on building retro sci-fi style rockets with volume greater than the ISS. Pretty exciting time to be alive.

Yes, though this and electric cars both required a single man with combination of wealth, charisma and ability to think beyond their own wallet - which is a very rare set of characteristics to coincide in a single person - who then could drag the market kicking and screaming into accepting EVs and reusable rockets. Unfortunately, depending on such happenstance doesn't scale, so it's not a reliable way of creating a b…

> Yes, though this and electric cars both required a single man with combination of wealth, charisma and ability to think beyond their own wallet [...]

Elon Musk became the richest African-American in the process. I don't think he needed to think beyond his own wallet? (He might have or not. I don't know what he's thinking.)

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

#76

Post by eru »

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.

Not really. The problem is that their central bank let their nominal GDP implode.

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

#77

Post by buran77 »

eru wrote: post #71
masswerk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you mean replaced? There's more art than ever, isn't there?

Perhaps the idea is that today generally speaking there's a clearer separation between art and engineering. We tend to have functional things, or ones focused on impressive visuals at the expense of the functionality.

Comparatively very few things want to be both. The car wanted to be both engineering and "art" in the 50s-60s, in the 70s buildings had their turn with all kinds of experimental architecture. In the 80s clothing and fashion became art with outrageous and flashy colors and designs.

These days we have a clearer line between art and engineering. Then again my opinion may just be a product of being surrounded by "present day life", creating some bias. Or maybe electronics are today's form over function.

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

#78

Post by beyondcompute »

Why “bizzare”? And what is “Logan’s Run”? That building is absolutely breathtaking! It’s maybe my favorite structure on the planet. And it would be so cool if it got rebuilt (without the asbestos)!

By the way, I really enjoyed this documentary: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nakagincapsuletower

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

#79

Post by ekianjo »

baybal2 wrote: post #32
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.

It's a big mystery for me how the things went down since seventies. I think the first signs of not decline, but I'd say "wind down" were quite apparent in eighties already.

Oh you had smartphones and the web in the 70s ?

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

#80

Post by beyondcompute »

cody_ellingham wrote: post #8

I published a photobook 'Danchi Dreams' in 2018 that captured the massive Japanese apartment blocks from the same era as Nakagin. The apartment buildings, known as 'danchi', were constructed from the 1960s - 1980s to replace burnt-out cities and house a booming population. Though they might not be quite as spectacular as what the Metabolists dreamed up I think they shared a forward-looking vision for what the modern…

That looks so good! Can I see more images somewhere? Is electronic version of the book available?
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