This building (1970-1972) was one of the first embodied structures of the "capsule" system. Separate volumes of apartments with built-in furniture, a bathroom and even a calculator, with an area of 4 X 2.5 m, are fixed on a concrete frame with only 4 bolts each. According to the principles of metabolism, a building should develop according to its own, "natural" laws, and individual capsules can be easily replaced as they wear out: they were manufactured at the factory and placed in place with a crane.
But all Kurokawa's proposals for such a reconstruction were refused by the owners of the house. Now the infrastructure of the building is in a deplorable state, and the asbestos used in construction also raises concerns of residents. They advocated the demolition of the building, followed by the construction of a new residential building on the same site. Moreover, one of them volunteered to develop a project for this new building.
The architect himself estimates the chances of saving one of his most famous structures as 50-50. Despite the world-famous building and the constant pilgrimage of Western tourists (they even made a copy of one of the life-size capsules, which works as a kind of museum), the Japanese government refused include the building in the list of protected monuments. The international organization DOCOMOMO tried to achieve the same from UNESCO, but also without success.
