Tezos

47. Metabolist Living

Creator

tz1U8x9dUtdv4mtLUvaukpMNVi1wvNxr1gy2

Description

47. Metabolist Living "Drawing Exercises" 1280 x 1024 px., gif 2022 "Metabolism is the name of the group, in which each member proposes further designs of our coming world through his concrete designs and illustrations. We regard human society as a vital process - a continuous development from atom to nebula. The reason why we use such a biological word, metabolism, is that we believe design and technology should be a denotation of human society. We are not going to accept metabolism as a natural process, but try to encourage active metabolic development of our society through our proposals." - from "Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism, 1960" "The capsule is cyborg architecture. Man, machine, and sace build a new organic body which transcends confrontation. As a human being equipped with man-made internal organ comes a new species which is neither machine nor human, so the capsule transcends man and equipment. Architecture from now on will increasingly take on the character of equipment. This new elaborate device is not a 'facility', like a tool, but is a 0part to be integrated into a life pattern and has, in itself, an objective existence." - from "Capsule Declaration" by Kisho Kurokawa, 1969 The Nakagin Capsule Tower began disassembly on April 12, 2022. For 50 years it dwelled among the Tokyo skyscrapers and, over time, Kisho Kurokawa's modular building became a jewel of the Metabolist architecture movement. Metabolism or Shinchintaisha (新陳代謝) was a post-ww2 Japanese architectural movement that enjoyed a moment in the vanguard of urbanism during the 1960s and 1970s before receding. One Metabolist project that has gained wide renown is the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo. Kurokawa envisioned a central structure that would feed into modular capsule apartments and offices that can be moved at ease. In many ways Nakagin was as apt visualization of society in late capitalism: human capsules like blood cells that circulate and feed the leviathan of capital. Kurokawa and the Metabolists strove to harmonize between the permanent and the transient. For Nakagin this ideal vision had material obstacles, as modular design presupposes ongoing scaled production and maintenance, it also presupposes something akin to a state, that can regulate and negotiate the needs of modular living beyond the livelihood of corporations or market caprice. Nakagin simply fell into disrepair as time wore on and now they are taking it down. The city only becomes a body if we can all tend to it as such, otherwise it's just gated blocks of dead concrete --an asphalt oven. I kind of live in a capsule in Western Mass, one that was literally built in 1900. The 1.5 bedroom duplex I've long rented has been divide up between me, my partner, and her two tween kids. We all live in little capsules and our landlord hates it, he makes comments all the time about the kids taking up too much space or using up too much water, unaware that this constitutes housing discrimination in Massachusetts. It feels weird to make art about housing when you are worried about your family being displaced. But the Nakagin Tower Capsules are a strange kind of dystopic fantasy. Sure they are claustrophobic little boxes reminiscent of the 5th Element and other sci-fi hellworlds, but they also imagine a society where one can wear home like a protective shell. That they can bring home wherever they go, because somewhere there is a structure, an little open slot for them to congregate. > Created in Deluxe Paint IV on an emulated Amiga A1200 computer. // Artwork by Sabato Visconti // www.sabatobox.com // @sabatobox //