A capsule measures 2.3 m × 3.8 m × 2.1 m ....
I could
imagine living in a capsule for a couple of days but I won’t do that for a
year. Probably I would feel like a hamster in a cage next to other lonely hamsters. But perhaps a homeless person
would like to live in such a capsule and have a room which he could call “my home”.
Could you imagine living in such a capsule?
I also couldn‘t imagine to live there for good. But if I would be in the situation having no money for a bigger flat and being single, well it would be possible. But just as a single, I think with an other person in there, conflicts are for sure. Or you start to blend it out, that you need space not just the real space the space of individuality, the space to just being yourself. But there is the point, I think we Europeans do need more space of that than Japanese People. Well if I imagine this new capsules they are having, where there is just the bed, almost nothing else in there. Businesspeople working I don’t know 15 hours a day, and sleep some hours in those capsules, and go back to work. At their day of, they go back to their family. Imagine having no private space makes me feel very uncomfortable. But the pressure of business and the absents of space brings a lot of people to live exactly this life. Are they are feeling uncomfortable or is it a great new way to manage their live. I don‘t know.
ReplyDeleteWell this is what came out of the project capsule housing. But the idea of the first capsule tower was an other. Of course less space, because of the infrastructure. But the idea was to give people the opportunity to life and work in Tokyo. To individualize it with the most modern standard, and an utopic idea of freedom and independents. The clue is to have your own individualized capsule, and put it on to the tower like you prefer it, and when you go on vacation you take your capsule with you, to the beach, to the mountains wherever you go. And then you come back into the center of town. Lifestyle pure. But with so much utopic futuristic ideas of this world, the concept didn’t come out like that. Well the tower is in a good position, and the capsules where affordable but the high standard of electronic equipment got old and shabby in a very short time, as result of rapidly changing technologies each year. The outside material got old, grey and rusty, a picture witch has nothing to do with the white outstanding abstract art construction as what it was planned.
And still it stands there evoking interest, and clearly being different to other buildings. A monument of the Metabolism thought of the 70ies. A idea of being individual and bringing together people in a civilization where the individual space getting smaller, creating solutions, searching for ways out of the normal, forming a new paradigm of living. It stayed in this form a vision, but in others it got true, but I fear not at the aspect of the individual, more at the side of economic relevance.
The more I think about the project the more I like it. Specially for Japan, I don‘t know, I would find it kind of weird to imagine to have a capsule tower in the center of Vienna. But a tower with capsules not that strictly build with the technic equipment, I completely would leaf that out, so you could change that to your personal need, and with wooden panels. And the thing with buying and creating your own capsule and taking it with you wherever you go, didn’t work out so well. So I would say as soon as someone moves out to sell it to someone else. Like a flat. Well then the idea would grow to a space saving apartment house with an original look. Why not, better than the Blattenbau constructions without any charms at all.
Great picture! Thank you for the picture and also finding some inside views of the building and also the current picture of its decay!
ReplyDeleteI want to comment on Birgitta Schillers posting. I find it very interesting how you introduce the 'utopia' here, specifically the twist, where you write it can be either about "Individuality" OR "economic relevance". I think we will hear from Lars Schmidt (who will do the excursion with us) about the dialectics between "what is the utopic idea of the architects and artists" in the beginning, and then, what actually is built in reality, following "economic (money, space, material, etc.) reasoning".
This very well relates to the Simmel article, who in chapter 3 writes about 'money, intellect and alienation' in his article 'Metropolis and Mental Life". There he argues that "Money economy and the dominance of the intellect are intrinsically connected (...) (Money) reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much? All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individulity, whereas in rational relations man is rechoned with like a number"
According to this, one might think, that sometimes architects are allowed to phantasize in a creative way (including big ideas, aspects of individuality, emotions, architectural space as relational meeting point), but as soon as the project hits reality, and is being built, the concept changes and submits itself to the economic reasoning again. Following the 'rules of metropolitan life'.
Is it possible to make utopian dreams come true (in our society), or would they turn into nightmares immediately (see also Slavoj Žižek's movie "The pervert's guide to cinema")
Kathrin Moertl & Stephan Steiner
Well. Living in such a flat I can’t see happening. It would never have occoured to me. This flats aren’t spacious, there is no private space. As far as I’m concernt, I need the right to privacy, space for myselfe to feel safe. I also couldn’t think about living there for more than a week. The more I think about it, the more fear-evoking it looks to me. As well as Brigitta, I’m of the opinion, that Europeans ned more space than Japanese. In fact, it appears to me, that the most people use this capsules as a „second“ home. I would imagine to become insane in this black –to – white walls.
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