Capsules: Typology of Other Architecture

Peter Šenk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351987288
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book investigates the architectural, product design, and urban typology of the capsule which, beginning in the 1960s, broadened the concept of the basic building blocks of architecture to include a minimal living unit, called the "capsule." Here it is presented with regard to the continuity of the development of the Modern Movement, its revisionist criticism, pioneering examples, as well as contemporary examples and uses. The typology of the capsule allows us to consider this theme in terms of the architecture of resistance, with the potential to search for an "other" architecture that is embedded in our contemporaneity (manifested in small dwellings, composite structures, and container units; shelters and mobile homes in nature and the urban environment; technology transfer in high-tech designs; devices, additions, and extensions etc.). The concept of the capsule as a building element of architecture, as well as a spatial element, can therefore be regarded as having a generative potential for an architecture of personal space for the individual, forcing us to reflect on our existing living and dwelling conditions.

1
FRAME(WORK)

No one can be close to others, without also having frequent opportunities to be alone.

Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language¹

The capsule is cyborg architecture. Man, machine and space build a new organic body which transcends confrontation.

Kisho Kurokawa, Capsule Declaration²

The creation of a style or a set of imitable mannerisms is one thing, but the creation of typologies is altogether more intriguing.

Peter Cook, Capsules, Pods and Skins³

At the end of the experimental 1960s, Peter Cook from Archigram emphasized that the 20th century provided “several occasions when science, technology and human emancipation have coincided in a way that caused architecture to explode.”⁴ In the first half of the 1950s, New Brutalism produced “a new belated explosion” in architectural theory. With its attitude to the use of materials, the direction of Alison and Peter Smithson, which implied the revival of the original morals of the Modern Movement, sought to establish a connection between buildings and their occupants. Architecture was supposed to be the direct result of a way of life.⁵ Several active contemporaries expressed their disagreement with the socio-economic system in terms of the spatial and urban relationships it produced. New visions of time and space emerged in conceptualized experimental cities and architectures, heralding the rise of a mobile civilization in which architecture would be a medium for experimenting with ways to improve the lives of those who engage with the buildings. But twenty years later, the criticism of existing cities, and increasingly more frequent radical criticism of modern functionalism, together with the heralds of the new era of postmodernism, symbolically culminated in the destruction of the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex, the failure of which was a disappointment to many.⁶ In the meantime, prior to the destructive detonations in St. Louis, architectural activities were marked by a number of explosions, producing a potential role model for the possibilities of a different, alternative mindset and actions in architecture. The visions and conceptualizations of new spatial and social relationships for the new spatial and social conditions addressed in this book in many ways enhanced urban futures pledged to indecisiveness and experimentation, discredited and held a mirror up to the triviality of the situation at that time, and were a forecast of other architecture of the future.

The topical issues of contemporary architecture are reflected in the detailed analysis of protagonists’ activities for whom architecture was (still) a public rather than a private affair,⁷ of concepts of a (proto-) sustainable architecture of replaceable and potentially renewable parts of buildings, and of the attitude toward the environment in general, as well as of those who pointed out the opportunities for more democratic, fuller and livelier common urban futures through complete individualization and its reflection in architecture. Attempts to return to the original ideals of functionalism, attempts to seek new identity by maintaining tradition and modernity, and new architectural opportunities within technology and lifestyle indicated the emergence of an architecture that would respond to the actual needs of society, help transform it, and show hope for a brighter future of life in cities and for the development of individuals within them. The proposals discussed were by no means without shortcomings, even within the context and conditions of the time of their occurrence. So we do not assume that we can simply transfer the presented concepts, programs, aesthetic schemes, and the like into contemporaneity. Such a direct transfer would be extremely anachronistic. However, if we extract their potentials and take their shortcomings into account, we may expect an upgrade of the project from when it was launched in contemporaneity. Therefore, through the development perspective, we will attempt to show the projects; their use, transformations and deviations, as well as the emancipatory potential of the aspirations, desires, and efforts expressed in them which, in contemporaneity, may serve as a support and a role model in working toward changes in society, institutions, space, and in architecture of the future.

The protagonists addressed differ in their pursuit of a different architectural approach and expression. On the one hand, it includes completely radical proposals, breaking with tradition in the manner of the historical avant-garde. Some proposals are an upgrade of traditional concepts in a completely new manner, for example the so-called invisible tradition, while others seek a third way by surpassing conflicts and facilitating the cohabitation of diversity. The issue of otherness is split among diverse approaches with a common aspiration for what is other, what is different from the prevailing, for an otherness that would facilitate the surpassing of the status quo. A common feature of various approaches to a search for other architecture as we understand it is active involvement in the given moment of social, technological, and architectural reality. Stemming from realistic conditions, activities include a critical, and sometimes even a utopian dimension. The emphasized disagreement with the state of affairs expresses the demand for change. By discussing in detail the concept and typology of the capsule, we will attempt to show those characteristics of other architecture that disclose their relevance and potential subversiveness also in contemporaneity.

We will highlight the relevant topics that refer to the issue of technology and of suitable architectural expression, the issue of home, the individuals’ dwellings, and communal space, the relation between architecture and land and its attachment to a place, the idea of withdrawal, and the autonomy of an individual and architecture in an individualized local world, and put them into context, with the help of selected pioneering and contemporary examples. We will attempt to disclose the differences between them, and show the path of their changes in the development of the concept and typology. The aforementioned topics aimed at examining the state of affairs in social, technological, and architectural reality call for alternative concepts, approaches, and typologies that track other architecture.

Quirky when they emerged, and nowadays still interesting concepts and approaches, such as an un-house, a realistic machine for living in, cyborg architecture, pop architecture, the use of materials as found, plug-in, clip-on, etc. launched the capsule into the orbit of architectural typologies in the 1960s. In its development, the typology of the capsule has unveiled its genealogy as proto-capsularity through the universalistic technocracy of Buckminster Fuller, and the American manifestation of resistance through the counterculture of “crash-pads.” Through the avant-garde positions between ethics and aesthetics, through existentialism, pop, and New Brutalism, it followed Reyner Banham’s radical une architecture autre, and manifested itself in provocative images of mechanization, and in techno-pop lifestyle or regional metabolic futurism. The typology of the capsule, which has always been committed to providing different, more suitable living conditions responding to necessary changes in society, is defined by its characteristics as one of those architectural concepts and typologies that may be attributed to the potential for seeking and manifesting other architecture.

The architectural typology called the capsule has been used in contemporary architecture since the 1960s, beginning mainly with the most notable now-legendary projects of Archigram and of the Japanese Metabolists. Since the 1920s, and particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, certain other architects and groups have been using technological, science fiction aesthetics with an obvious zest for the possibilities offered by super-technology, or even used the terms “capsulation” and “capsule.”⁸

The term “capsule” was first used for independent, mobile, and technologically equipped living and monofunctional units especially by English contemporaries Archigram and Cedric Price, and members of the Japanese group of Metabolists. Warren Chalk from Archigram began using the term capsule in 1964, for prefabricated mass-produced living units called Capsule Homes. That same year, Cedric Price used capsules for the project of a regional educational environment called Potteries Thinkbelt, while in the Japanese group of Metabolists, the genealogy of the Metabolist concept of the capsule which, with various names, has been present as such since 1959, was published by Kisho Kurokawa in Capsule Declaration (1969).⁹ Members of Archigram were well aware of the fact that the idea of mass-produced housing units with replaceable elements was not new. Therefore a member of the group, Warren Chalk, presented reference examples in his “Housing as a Consumer Product” from 1966: Cooperation of Le Corbusier with Jean Prouvé, individual Prouvé projects; living and mobile experiments designated Dymaxion with a bathroom for Phelps Dodge by Buckminster Fuller; House of the Future by Alison and Peter Smithson; prefabricated hotel units by Ionel Schein; Monsanto Plastic House in Disneyland; works of Japanese Metabolists, and of Arthur Quarmby in England;¹⁰ all these examples are attempts to find technological other architecture in the period of the destabilization of Heroic Modernism and the International Style. Characteristic of the aforementioned reference examples of Archigram is their excitement over the opportunities facilitated by new technology, the use of new materials and structural solutions, and by mass production, wishing to offer individuals, society, cities, and the profession something brand new. In the new and different, Archigram recognized the potential to create new and lively lifestyles. The conscious coupling of architectural expression with everyday life, in connection with popular culture, which was completely unacceptable for high modernism, was supported by the internationalization and globalization of a consumer culture that was fully established and prevailing from as far back as the 1960s. Despite the criticism of American models constantly popping up, the post-war impetus was in full swing in the early 1960s. In many cases, issues of justification and the suitability of technological progress, consumerism, and scientific development were concealed by enthusiasm for the opportunities to create a better world.

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The word capsule derives from the Latin word capsula, which means “a small case or box,” and is the diminutive of capsa, which has a broader meaning: “a container, case, box (also a small box),” and is a derivative of capere meaning “seize, grab, take, capture.” The term capsule is used for the literal, physical description of an item or structure and, figuratively, as a metaphor. We encounter the concept of the capsule particularly in the field of engineering and natural sciences, namely in pharmacology, anatomy, and medicine in general, in microbiology, botany, and biology, in space engineering, and also in architecture and space.¹¹

Only in a handful of dictionaries and encyclopedias is the term capsule stated under headwords connected to the trend of megastructures and utopian radical architectural experiments, particularly of Archigram, the group of Metabolists, and Metabolism in general. They describe capsules as, for example, individual units that may be clipped on, or plugged in, a structural frame, which are mobile and expendable, and react to human desires.¹² Capsules are presented as prefabricated housing units that may be stacked into tower-like structures, or used in megastructures as extra-sophisticated units, or rather as products of industrial design that make cities more responsive to swift changes.¹³ They are included in conceptual architecture, and are a product of praising popular taste and the potential of new technology. They are prefabricated, made with advanced technology in mass-production processes and as small housing units employ state-of-the-art technology.¹⁴ Encyclopedias of architecture and historical overviews under the heading “capsule” most frequently mention projects and structures of Archigram, Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo by Kisho Kurokawa, capsules at Expo ’70 in Osaka and, naturally, capsule hotels, particularly in Japan.

We will follow the definitions of a capsule unit or capsule in architecture through the development of typology by reviewing the activity of its predecessors and main protagonists. As a starting point, let us use a corresponding and illustrative definition made by a contemporary of the capsule architecture pioneers, Günther Feuerstein, who defined a capsule as “the smallest, still moveable, and autonomous environment, well-equipped with communications.”¹⁵

In pioneering examples of living unit designs from the mid-20th century, the concept of the capsule was related to the idea of facilitating a new lifestyle of intensive urbanity, or personal and social transformation on the basis of free will, independence, mobility, and even transcendence. In archit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Illustration credits
• Preface
• 1 Frame(work)
• 2 Development—pioneers and contemporaries
• 3 Catalog—typology and its manifestations
• 4 Medium—typology and image
• 5 Coda—in pursuit of other architecture
• Select Bibliography
• Index