
How Japan's visionaries saw the future - happy-go-lucky
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180725-how-japans-visionaries-saw-the-future
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Nr7
As an interesting side note, that capsule building was used in the old DOS PC
game Transport Tycoon as one of the futuristic type of buildings that would
appear in cities in late game. [http://sidenote.hu/wp-
content/uploads/2009/09/nakagin_capsul...](http://sidenote.hu/wp-
content/uploads/2009/09/nakagin_capsule_tower_1.jpg)

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Arkdy
While some of their ideas, like composable, modular buildings are even more
feasible and relevant now, given how much fabrication occurs offsite these
days, the aesthetics of the buildings can seem painfully dated (see the
capsule building).

If we were to compare Metabolism to Brutalism, another mid-90s architectural
movement and style, we can see how the motivations behind an aesthetic can
influence it's staying power. To the Metabolists, they were making a big,
provocative art project. Their goal was to envision a future, in all their
violent masculinity.

In contrast, the Brutalists were concerned with providing the most practical
solutions to modern problems. They did things like bordering a compound with a
specifically shaped wall to limit the noise pollution of those new 'highway
things,' or revealing the pipes to the inhabitants to create a sense of honest
construction at a time when the workings of buildings were hidden in the
service of form.

I'd argue that the Brutalist structures remain practical so long as the
problems they set out to solve remain, but that the Metabolist buildings were
impractical from the start because they were never meant to be.

~~~
majos
Huh. My understanding is that brutalism's claimed emphasis on practicality was
kind of a pose, and that it was more of a competition to see who could be the
most anti-bourgeois, to the extent that the working class hated living in
honest, unpretentious brutalist public housing since it was so uncomfortable.

As an added bonus the rise of brutalism and international style, and the
attendant disdain for intricate and expensive craftsmanship in favor of honest
mass-produced clean lines, put a bunch of working-class craftsmen out of work.

Of course, I got all this from one read of _From Bauhaus to Our House_ , so
it's a little prejudiced.

~~~
Arkdy
I never considered that the move away from ornaments might be a net negative
on working class jobs. That's a little chilling.

_From Bauhaus to our House_ was published in 81 (near the end of the
movement), so it's completely possible that Brutalism had strayed from it's
original ethos by then.

Still, outside the book, it should be noted that some of the recent backlash
against the style is based on looking at an unmaintained building, and then
blaming it for crime rates etc, conveniently ignoring other soci-economic
factors.

Also, one of the flaws/features of the style was that since you're showing the
materials, they needed to be high-quality and maintained. You couldn't just
paint over cracks. This means that they're sensitive to neglect, and often,
they were.

