The Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, a landmark of the post-war Japanese Metabolism architectural movement, is being demolished due to disuse and disrepair. However, the tower will live on in both the real world and the metaverse, thanks to a digital model, created by BDP.
The tower, built in 1972, featured 140 self-contained prefabricated capsules attached to two concrete towers. Kisho Kurokawa, one of the founders of Metabolism, designed the building for Tokyo’s “salarymen” or company-loyal white-collar workers.
In 2022, we were approached by KKAA to create a digital model of the tower. Both practices are part of the Nippon Koei group of companies, so this was a great opportunity to collaborate on digital-led project design.
We were provided with record drawings from KKAA and began to source as much additional material about the tower as could be found. Modelling of the architecture, structure and MEP were progressed in the Autodesk REVIT platform, with BIM360 used for model viewing and commenting between Tokyo and the UK.
The team received approximately 70 record drawings, all 50 years old and in Japanese, but managed to find historic information on the building from photographs and videos. Although there were 140 capsules in the building, the team produced detailed models for FF&E, MEP, and architecture for eight design variants.
The model went through about a dozen iterations, and the team had to communicate the changes made due to buildability issues. We had to make sure that we were communicating the changes, and they were understood and accepted by the architects. Some of the discussion ended up being around things like the structural frame for the capsules: the drawing suggested one thing and then record photographs of fabrication clearly showed something else. Another related to the privacy screens and blinds on some of the windows, but understanding and agreeing the actual installed locations, rather than what was identified on the original drawings, took a little bit of time. We were trying to get the character of the building as accurate and as correct as it could be before demolition was completed.