In March 1969, the Japanese SP (Space Design) magazine published the article Capsule Declaration by Japanese architect Kisho Kurosawa, one of the founders of the Metabolist Movement. Eighty years later, the article was reprinted and included in Korosawa’s book Metabolism in Architecture.
Capsule Declaration is structured in eight articles for a radical transformation of society and architecture: Art 1: “The capsule is cy-borg architecture.” Art 2: “A capsule is a dwelling of Homo movens.” Art 3: “The capsule suggests a diversified society.” Art 4: “The capsule is intended to institute an entirely new family system centred on individuals”. Art 5: “The true home for capsule dwellers, where they feel they belong and where they satisfy their inner, spiritual requirements, will be the metapolis”. Art 6: “The capsule is a feedback mechanism in an information-oriented, a technetronic, society”. Art 7: “The capsule is the ultimate form of a prefabricated building – an industrialised building”. Art 8: “The capsule mentality is opposed to uniformity and systematic thinking”.
(…) In Kurokawa’s text, the idea of a capsule, even if in dialogue with similar propositions with Buckminster Fuller, Archigram and Raimund Abraham, among others, acquires new dimensions. The capsule is a “cyborg architecture”, a symbiotic structure of mutually dependent elements – man, machine and space. As such, it is a “device which has become a living space itself”, and without which humans cannot hope to live. Reflecting the sensibility that pervaded the 1960s – and rooted in the impact caused by the publication of the first images of Earth taken from outer space, as well as the haunting memories of the Hiroshima Bomb – the environment is portrayed as a home that neither offers comfort nor haven, a body to be preserves and yet, that could become a threat to human survival. This hostile environment, where only technology would ensure human survival, maximising bodies and forging their identity, is the habitat of the Homo movens.