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title of the issue curated by: JOE SUE
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Michael Vlasopoulos is an architect from Greece. He currently studies in Harvard GSD as an MDesS candidate in History and Philosophy of Design. He!s interested in philosophical issues of design, technology and architecture, and their convergence around the concept of domestic space. He lives in a world where theory is more real than practice. When he grows up, he wants to be a philosopher.
Michael Vlasopoulos
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My Capsule A stream of consciousness— manifesto about Kisho Kurokawa!s Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972) in Tokyo, adopting the ÀUVW SHUVRQ YLHZ RI D ÀFWLWLRXV inhabitant.
,VRPHWULF SODQ RI D W\SLFDO FDSVXOH RI 1DNDJLQ 7RZHU LQ .LVKÄż .XURkawa, Metabolism in architecture (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977), 109
Ripley!s cryogenic chamber in Ridley Scott!s Alien (1979)
The one-room house in Buster Keaton!s The Scarecrow (1920)
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My Capsule Michael Vlasopoulos DAY ZERO I never forget the day I bought my capsule. The money could buy me a Toyota car but, instead of a breeze on the face in a seat of a sportscar, I decided to claim a stagnant volume of air as my own. I left behind my movable furniture, along with my family!s history ingrained in them. Everything had to ÀW LQVLGH WZR VXLWFDVHV WKLV LV WKH PD[LPXP YROXPH of stuff my capsule can handle. Unencumbered by the weight of old lifestyles, I engage in a new one. SLEEP The ascetic kernel of my new home gives me the perfect excuse to live my city as lavishly as I always wanted -with clear conscience. I can now ÁRZ IUHHO\ LQ WKH JHQHULF VSDFH RI FRQVXPSWLRQ RI the urban outside, having already reserved a point of return. As long as the city sustains my eccentricities, my desires, my food habits and my plastic impulses, my house constitutes a purgatory for my sleep. Sleep has become a secular version of confession, an act RI QHXURORJLFDO SXULÀFDWLRQ RI PHPRU\ LQ D PDVV consumption culture. Oblong, because it is designed for the horizontal of the lying body, the capsule is endowed with a white plastic rigidity. During the unconscious faze of sleep, the bed is the only tool we keep wrapped around or attached to our dormant bodies. It can always be seen as a cave, a suit or a cryogenic shelter for the sleeping body. It is the only stasis a nomad can afford. OCD As for the inside, I dispensed with the home decoration catalogues. My interior is immune to the objets a of decoration. The only way to refrain from the fetishization of domestic objects is to inhabit an over-sized one. To inhabit a space where there is no distinction between walls and the appliances that furnish them. Surfaces and objects merge into one unfetishizable entity. Nothing should be just what it appears to be: The appliances are the wall, the wall is the cabinets, almost like in that old Buster Keaton movie, featuring a one-room house where one appliance transforms into the other as it short-circuits the household chores. This built-in compactness is a remedy for the Obsessive-
2IĂ€FH VSDFH LQ D VWLOO IURP -DFTXHV 7DWLŇ‹V Play Time (1967)
Invented in 1895 and patented in 1904 in America, King Camp Gillette!s two-edged disposable blade revolutionized shaving and gave its name to the so-called razor and blades business model.
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Compulsive Disorder that we-urbanites have developed as a result of the pathogenic profusion of partial objects. An ecology of objects revolves around our subjects and upsets us when we fail to orchestrate WKHLU SRVLWLRQV LQ VSDFH )L[LW\ FXUHV À[DWLRQ METRO My transporting-self has always been surrounded by capsules. What is more common to me than the universal dimensions of the train wagon or the metro plastics, clinical surfaces with no joints so as WR HDVH WKH FOHDQLQJ ULWXDO URXWLQL]HG VWHULOL]DWLRQV by wide sweeps. I!m a commuter, and this is my own kind of regionalism; this is the environment in which I thrive. Along with other !white-collars", we voyage in the vast space of our borderless culture. We travel in the postmodern speed of telecommunication, penetrating slabs with our elevators, permeating wall partitions with our gazes on the vast horizon of the RIÀFH VSDFH, meeting our bosses at the edges of our à DW HDUWK 0\ IDWKHU XVHG WR VD\ WKDW D ´PDQ KDV WR EH ready to go any moment.� He always kept a packed suitcase under his bed. If he was alive, he would be happy to see me living inside one. SHAVE Every time , VKDYH , UHà HFW RQ WKH ZRQGHUIXO DFKLHYHPHQW RI WKH disposable blade. There was a point in the history of western civilization where the shaving machine seized to be a single, autonomous contraption and was reLQYHQWHG DV D à RZ RI UHQHZDEOH EODGHV WKDW H[WHQGHG the life of the system: grip-head-blade. MODULE No columns interrupt the one-room continuity of my domestic space. No slab extends through other apartments. No more shared walls. No embarrassing FRQWLJXLW\ ZLWK RWKHU à DWV , RZQ DOO VLGHV DQG DOO IDFHWV RI D FRKHUHQW PRGXOH , RZQ D FRPPRGLÀHG interior, sealed shut like an airlock. I inhabit a tower that can break into its parts. It can be dismantled or synthesized at different !metabolic rates," just like my shaving machine. The capsules—like cells if it were— can be replaced when they wear off. And thus, architecture aspires to outlive the organic processes of its carbon-based users by reproducing its inorganic form. Anything stable and unresponsive dies. This is the age of Life, superseding the age of Machine. This tower had to internalize change. And thus, the same material processes that violently reproduce urban IRUP ZLOO HYHQWXDOO\ SUHVHUYH P\ OLIHVW\OH LQGHÀQLWHO\
´0RQVDQWR +RPH RI WKH )XWXUHµ EURFKXUH IRU ´DQ H[SHULPHQWDO GHVLJQ GHPonstrating structural applications of plastics,” Matterhorn, Monsanto Chemical Co. 1958
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EMERGENCY The capsule form emerged out of our collective anxieties. It is a pure artifact of the coldwar era, isomorphic to the American cold-war bombshelter (but only elevated), similar to the Space shuttle EXW RQO\ JURXQGHG $UFKLWHFWXUH KDG WR ÀQG D ZD\ to stand like the Hiroshima Dome, the sole building surviving the catastrophe of !45. It had to struggle constantly with tectonic plates and geopolitical SUHVVXUHV ,W KDG WR EHFRPH D WUHQFK D EDUULFDGH WR GHà HFW EXOOHWV UDGLDWLRQ DQG VHLVPLF DFWLYLW\ 1DNDJLQ 7RZHU UHVHPEOHV D VFL À PRWKHUVKLS LQ D VWDWH RI emergency: panic forces the crew to evacuate the vast collective corridors and crowded hangars and pushes them into individual life-support escape pods. 3HRSOH ÀJKW RYHU WKH ODVW HPHUJHQF\ VSDFH UDIW DQG kill each other in their urge to escape. "Everybody for KLPVHOI ҋ 7KH FDSVXOHV DUH DERXW WR GHWDFK DQG à \ away. PLASTIC I remember reading on a newspaper about the Monsanto House of the Future in America. A reinforced polyester construction—a cross-shaped "cell! itself (though unfortunately familiocentric by design)—that was proven to be so sturdy that, after serving its purpose, the demolition ball bounced back on its shell, failing to turn it into rubble. The structure was stronger than any known technology of demolition, or let!s say metabolization. It stroke me: my house has to be plastic as well. In my mind, Plastic became this ultimate protective material —almost alchemical—the one that could secure my possessions from any outside threat. Plastic is the new stone. STOMACH Behold white-collar salary man, the means to perpetuate your lifestyle LQGHÀQLWHO\ $Q architecture of abstinence to repress your reproduction in favor of the reproduction of our class. To possess the magical properties of plastic, to be a part of a capitalist alimentary system, climb on board this inorganic food chain. Let your property à RZ UK\WKPLFDOO\ OLNH IRRG XQWLO LW UHFRQVWLWXWHV WKH same persevering organism, detached from the sluggish ancestral land. Together we build our own middle-class, capsule by capsule, feeding it with our pill-like homes. Hurry up and secure a position in this digestion!