The advantages of prefabricated building systems were enthusiastically appropriated by japanese architects that were facing rebuilding of the nation after the defeat and destruction of many Japanese cities after the second world war.6 In 1962 Kisho Kurokawa developed a building system called “BoxType Apartments”, a main difference to the Gropius and Mayers system of walls was that parts of the system had already started to take shape of capsules that could be “plugged in” to larger spaces, a precursor of the self contained apartments of the Nakagin Capsule Tower. Kurokawas colleague and friend Kiyonori Kikutake also experimented with similar ideas in his “Sky House” a house that grew with “Move nets”, pods that attached under the main floor witch is raised on concrete piloti. Plug-In Architecture ”All ... inhabitants of the Tower and the people in the vicinity of the Tower will send their sincere and warmful congratulations for the starting of a new life of a fresh couple when they observe the lifting of new unit ” Kiyonori Kikutake, 19607 Kikutakes “Tower shaped community” from 1958 is a never realized project that launched the idea of the apartment as a Plugin capsule on a supporting tower.8 to the world outside Japan. It was presented by Kenzo Tange on the Otterlo congress in 19599 and later published in The Metabolist manifesto 1960. In tower shaped community individual capsules contained the living quarters were designed to be plugged in to a core. It is the superstructure, the central concrete core that is the neighborhood in Kikutakes tower, and we se a clear separation between the supporting structure, the neighborhood, and the individual capsules, that can be independently added or removed.
Tower-Shaped Community, Kiyonori Kikutake, 195811
“A huge concrete cylinder will make a pleasant atmosphere in the neighborhood” Kiyonori Kikutake, 1960 10 The idea proved to be attractive and was quickly picked up by architects looking for ways to incorporate modern production capabilities into architecture. The Archigram group used the concept in their Plug in City, a megastructure that houses the individual homes, called “Plug in capsule homes” both plugged in to towers and nested in a Space frame grid. Like many of the metabolist projects Plug in city has no clear and defined ending, it is a system capable of growth and regeneration. 6. R. Broadhurst (ed.), p. 32. 7. Koolhaas, Obrist p. 360. 8. A. Ekholm, N. Ahrbom, P Broberg and P-E. Skriver, Utvecklingen mot strukturalism i arkitekturen, Stockholm, Statens råd för byggforskning, 1980, p. 70. 9. ibid p. 70. 10. Koolhaas, Obrist, p. 360. 11. K. Kikutake, Tower-Shaped Community, 1958, http://thetemplesofconsumption.blogspot.se/2012/03/kiyonori-kikutake-1928-2011. html, Accessed 2 October 2014. 12. P. Cook, Plug-In City, 1964, https://relationalthought.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/1100/, accessed 2 October 2014
Plug-In City, Peter Cook, 196412