Noboru kawazoe biography graphic organizer
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Nakagin Capsule Tower
Building in Tokyo
The Nakagin Capsule Tower Building[a] was a mixed-use residential and office tower in the upscale Ginza district of Tokyo, Japan designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa. Completed in two years from 1970 to 1972,[1]: 388 the building was a rare remaining example of Japanese Metabolism[2]: 105 alongside the older Kyoto International Conference Center, an architectural movement emblematic of Japan's postwar cultural resurgence. It was the world's first example of capsule architecture ostensibly built for permanent and practical use. The building, however, fell into disrepair. Around thirty of the 140 capsules were still in use as apartments by October 2012, while others were used for storage or office space, or simply abandoned and allowed to deteriorate. As recently as August 2017 capsules could still be rented (relatively inexpensively, considering its Ginza locale), althoug
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Kiyonori Kikutake: Structuring the Future
Metabolism: Theory and Practice
More than half a century has passed since the publication of Metabolism and its distribution to attendees of the 1960 World Design Conference in Tokyo. 1 Though frequently referred to as a manifesto, the pamphlet was in fact a collection of essays and urban design projects by architectural critic Kawazoe Noboru and four ung architects then launching their practices: Kiyonori Kikutake, Kishō Kurokawa, Fumihiko Maki, and Masato Ōtaka. Their texts and design proposals revolved around a core idea: that the increasingly disparate rates of change in cities required new paradigms for architectural and infrastructural design. The pamphlet’s modest production values did nothing to detract from the potency of this message in the mid-20th-century context of rapid urbanization and mass production. Metabolism soon found its way into academic and professional discussions in far corners of the globe. In postwar Eur
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