Close
  

MAS Context Fall Talks 2022

The Aesthetic of Transience

October 25, 2022 at 6PM

Online talk by curator Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher and professor Ken Tadashi Oshima on the Nakagin Capsule Tower.

Contributors

During this online event, Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design and head of the Department of Architecture and Design at SFMOMA, and Ken Tadashi Oshima, author and professor of architecture at the University of Washington, discussed the ideas of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, prefabrication in Japan, its enduring allure amidst the constant changes in urban Japan, and the efforts to preserve a selection of the original units.

Completed in 1972 by the architect Kisho Kurokawa, the Nakagin Capsule Tower was one of the few proposals realized through the architectural movement Metabolism in the 1960s. As a building attached with 140 removable apartment units, it embodied the future of urban living envisioned by Kurokawa at that moment in postwar Japan. Furthermore, the building was a reminder of a future that was never realized in society at large and stood as an architectural anachronism within the city of Tokyo.

This event is related to the exhibition 1972/Accumulations by photographer Noritaka Minami on display at the MAS Context Reading Room between September 22 and December 8, 2022.

Mas issue living nakagin capsule tower 03

Nakagin Capsule Tower, Tokyo. © Tomio Ohashi. Courtesy of Kisho Kurokawa Architect & Associates.

Comments

Contributor Bios

Contributor

Bio

Contact

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher is the Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design and head of the Department of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). During her tenure at SFMOMA, Dunlop Fletcher has executed several curatorial projects including the exhibitions Lebbeus Woods, Architect in 2013 (co-curator); A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living at the Hammer Museum in 2013; The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and The Bay Area in 2012 as well as a commissioned work by filmmaker Mike Mills about Silicon Valley for the exhibition Project Los Altos: SFMOMA in the Bay Area in 2013. She has published significant essays on the practices of A. Quincy Jones, Ewan Gibbs, Tobias Wong, and Lebbeus Woods. Since 2010, she has been building SFMOMA’s Architecture and Design collection with an emphasis on experimental works of design since 1980, including seminal works by Neri Oxman, Ant Farm, Neil Denari, Nathalie du Pasquier, Iwan Baan, Nacho Carbonell, and Mathieu Lehanneur.

Ken Tadashi Oshima

Ken Tadashi Oshima is Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he teaches transnational architectural history, theory, and design. He has also been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and UCLA. He is a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians for lifetime achievement and served as President of the Society of Architectural Historians from 2016-18. Dr. Oshima’s publications include Kiyonori Kikutake: Between Land and Sea (Lars Müller/Harvard GSD, 2015), Architecturalized Asia (U. Hawai’i Press/Hong Kong U. Press, 2013), GLOBAL ENDS: towards the beginning (Toto, 2012), International Architecture in Interwar Japan: Constructing Kokusai Kenchiku (U. Washington Press, 2009) and Arata Isozaki (Phaidon, 2009). He curated GLOBAL ENDS: towards the beginning (Gallery MA, 2011), Tectonic Visions Between Land and Sea: Works of Kiyonori Kikutake (Harvard GSD, 2012), “SANAA: Beyond Borders (Henry Art Gallery 2007-8) and was a co-curator of Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive (Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2017) and Crafting a Modern World: The Architecture and Design of Antonin and Noemi Raymond (UPenn, UCSB, Kamakura Museum of Modern Art, 2006-7). He was an editor and contributor to Architecture + Urbanism for more than ten years, co-authoring the two-volume special issue, “Visions of the Real: Modern Houses in the 20th Century” (2000). His articles on the international context of architecture and urbanism in Japan have been published in journals including Architectural Review, Architectural Theory Review, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Kenchiku Bunka, Japan Architect, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and the AA Files.