Site of Lost Icon of Metabolism Set To Be Luxury Hotel

During our roughly year-long reporting over Nakagin Capsule Tower — from the May 2021 news of owners of the plug-in capsules moving out, to the efforts of preservationists to save and transport some of the capsules elsewhere, and to the last-minute photos of the tower ahead of its demolition in 2022 — it never dawned on us to consider what would rise in its place. What could possibly follow a tower made of 140 prefabricated capsules plugged into two vertical cores, one of the only built symbols of Metabolism, the movement that heralded “the era of moving architecture”? Nothing could possibly come close to the avant-garde creation that lasted 50 years — longer if the capsules had been periodically removed and replaced, as designed. Nothing, indeed.

A single rendering of its replacement — Pullman Tokyo Ginza, a brand of Accor Hotels — is deflating, to say the least, revealing a business-as-usual hospitality design that exhibits none of the previous occupant's revolutionary fervor. The Nakagin Capsule Tower Preservation and Restoration Project, which has been leading the effort to save and relocated some of the capsules, called for “the hotel interior [to have] pictures or objects of the Nakagin Capsule Tower Building” on X, as a means of reminding people what came before, but it did not comment on the design of the hotel that will stand in the tower's place. At this early stage, with only one rendering shared by Accor, it is not even clear who designed the hotel. 

Ironically, Accor's Pullman brand descends from the hotel business created by George Pullman in Chicago in 1859, which was followed just five years later by Pullman's first “sleeper car.” The cars were so popular they eventually became known simply as Pullman cars. The synergy between Pullman's bedroom on rails and Kurokawa's idea of “moving architecture” is obvious, but it appears to be lost on the architect of Pullman Tokyo Ginza. Nevertheless, just as the Nakagin Capsule Tower had 140 capsules, the Pullman Tokyo Ginza will have just over that amount, 145 rooms, when it opens in late 2027.