Prefabrication experiments - 90 - Kisho Kurokawa's Apartment House

Applying the theoretical model of factory production to architecture has had its proponents all over the world and throughout modern history. Regarded as the future for mass housing, the union of quality and quantity in matters of building production was founded on the principles ascertained by Henry Ford’s production line or Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management methods. Applied to building construction, these theories gave modern architecture its radically industrial language and transformed design from stylistic historic imitation to grid-based systemic modular arrangements.

Although first modernists endeavoured to industrialize building, it was the Japanese metabolists, due to the necessary post-war reconstruction of Japan that sustained and furthered the early 20th century avant-garde’s dreams of quantity, functionalism, modularization and adaptable planning. 

As covered wagons and then automobiles were the models of manufacturing in the U.S.A., Japan’s industrialized aesthetic potentially bears some traditional roots in mobile capsule-like (Kago) people movers. The capsule was the ultimate form of flexible and agile architecture. The capsule, however, was only part of this meta-strategy for building. The basic component was the megastructure as a support system for the small functional plug-in units. Architectural experiments by Kisho Kurokawa exemplify the ideals forged by this movement, which united modern values along with post-war space-age predictions. The prefabricated apartment house Kurokawa designed in 1962 as an experiment foreshadowed his later designs for the Nakagin capsule tower or even the more ambitious Takara Beautillion for the 1970 universal exhibit. The three projects, built or un-built, demonstrated the plug and play nature of this product architecture.

The apartment house project included an infrastructure of precast concrete components and integrated functional glass fibre reinforced plastic shell capsule units for baths, kitchens or storage. The overall spatial structure composed of panelized walls and slabs was assembled with mechanical joints simplifying construction and any required future disassembly. The open frame structure was designed to receive the functional capsule units akin to bottles on a rack. Although repetitive, the megastructure and capsules' clustering was suggested in an asymmetrical pattern. This sensibility toward an overall dynamic plan arranged on standardized components showcased Kurokawa's sensitivity for achieving quality spatial relationships as well as an efficient industrialized building system.

Architectural model photographs