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The Last Days of Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower

japan-forward.com

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

#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.

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

#4

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.

Sadly true, at least in some dimensions. Though as I sit here in my bedroom staring into a massive multipanel array of sharp pixels, attached to a global fiberoptic firehose of information... it feels like a different sort of imagined future came true, though maybe not the best one. All it's missing is VR goggles (never been that interested personally) and hackable wetware.

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

#7
It reminds me of Canada's Habitat 67, which is also made up of prefabricated concrete rooms and sealed bathroom units. Designed as cheap housing for the future, it is now luxery housing but residents have to put up with similar problems such as a pipe burst in one apartment causes major problems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67

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

#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 world could be. http://danchi-dreams.com/

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

#9

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.

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 amazing.

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

#10

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.

how fast the ads can load

Of course in the 70s they had over the air TV so the ads loaded instantly.

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