All Photos By Gail

Completed in 1972 by architect Kisho Kurokawa, Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower was one of the most radical expressions of Japan’s Metabolist movement. Designed as a living, modular organism, the building consisted of prefabricated capsules meant to be replaced over time — an architecture of flexibility, impermanence, and futurist optimism. In reality, the capsules were never updated. Aging infrastructure, rising maintenance costs, and changing safety standards eventually led to the tower’s closure and demolition in 2022, transforming it from visionary landmark to architectural legend.


Photo of the Towers at MoMA

When the Nakagin Capsule Tower opened on April 5, 1972, its first 140 tenants each received a commemorative lamp shaped like the building itself—a miniature echo of its bold design. Decades later, Takayuki Sekine, a retiree and former Chamber of Commerce manager, discovered the building through an architecture guidebook. Along with his wife, Yumiko, he purchased capsule B1004 and was delighted to find it still intact, complete with much of its original furnishings and mid-century futurist charm.

Loyal residents until the building’s final years, the Sekines became careful stewards of its history. They collected memorabilia connected to the tower, including this lamp — an object that distilled the Nakagin Capsule Tower’s modular, utopian vision into something intimate and domestic. Today, the lamp stands as a reminder of a time when architecture dared to imagine the future not as permanent, but adaptable.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC