Tokyo’s Nakagin Capsule Tower Unit To be Shown at MoMA in New York

By Mutsumi Morita / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

10:30 JST, July 4, 2025

Part of an iconic residential capsule building in Tokyo’s Ginza district that was demolished in 2022 will be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York from July 10.

Designed by the late architect Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007), the Nakagin Capsule Tower building was completed in 1972 as a housing complex comprising a total of 140 single-room housing capsules. One of the capsules, now housed in the renowned institution for modern and contemporary art, will be shown at the exhibition “The Many Lives of the Nakagin Capsule Tower,” focusing on the building’s 50-year history, until July 12, 2026.

Thanks to the design using detachable and replaceable capsules, which each had about 10 square meters of space inside, the building was famous as a structure that represented Japan’s Metabolism architectural movement. It is also one of the representative works of Kurokawa, who designed the National Art Center, Tokyo, and the Toshiba IHI Pavilion for the 1970 Osaka Expo.

The capsules were never replaced, and the building was dismantled due to aging in 2022. The Nakagin Capsule Tower Preservation and Restoration Project, a citizen group formed by former unit owners and others to preserve the building, obtained and restored 23 capsules. The preservation group has been searching for recipients for them.

To date, capsules taken from the building have been added to the collections of several prominent overseas museums, including M+, one of Asia’s largest contemporary art museums in Hong Kong, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Evangelos Kotsioris, assistant curator at MoMA, told The Yomiuri Shimbun in writing that the museum housed the capsule because the tower is “one of the most important buildings of the 20th century at large.”

“The Nakagin Capsule Tower anticipated contemporary conversations about circularity in architecture, in other words, the idea that designers should not only think about the design and construction of buildings, but also their life cycles, and ultimate disassembly and repurposing of the materials that made them up,” Kotsioris wrote, adding that the museum concluded that the capsule deserves a place in MoMA’s collection.

“[The capsule] is a cozy space that has inspired generations of architects, and captivated the imaginations of both residents and people around the world,” Kotsioris wrote.

In addition to the capsule with its interior fully restored to the state it was in when the building was completed, about 45 related materials that include photographs, films and the project’s original models and drawings will be on display during the upcoming exhibition.