This is the Capsule Tower in Tokyo:

Here are my fav passages from an NYT about the Capsule Tower, a building that is fast running out of time:

Inside, each apartment is as compact as a space capsule. A wall of appliances and cabinets is built into one side, including a kitchen stove, a refrigerator, a television and a tape deck. A bathroom unit, about the size of an airplane lavatory, is set into an opposite corner. A big porthole window dominates the far end of the room, with a bed tucked underneath.

Part of the design’s appeal is voyeuristic. The portholes evoke gigantic peepholes. Their enormous size, coupled with the small scale of the rooms, exposes the entire apartment to the city outside. Many of the midlevel units look directly onto an elevated freeway, so you are almost face to face with people in passing cars. (On my first visit there, a tenant told me that during rush hour, drivers stuck in traffic often point or wave at residents.)

But the project’s lasting importance has more to do with its structural innovations, and how they reflect the Metabolists’ views on the evolution of cities. Each of the concrete capsules was assembled in a factory, including details like carpeting and bathroom fixtures. They were then shipped to the site and bolted, one by one, onto the concrete and steel cores that housed the building’s elevators, stairs and mechanical systems.

In theory, more capsules could be plugged in or removed whenever needed. The idea was to create a completely flexible system, one that could be adapted to the needs of a fast-paced, constantly changing society. The building became a symbol of Japan’s technological ambitions, as well as of the increasingly nomadic existence of the white-collar worker.

The current residents of this building want it to be no more. They want something new. They want a building that has a future and not one that had a future. But how is it possible that a building with the most perfect idea of the future ("the idea was to create a completely flexible system, one that could be adapted to the needs of a fast-paced, constantly changing society") could become outdated and hated? Our current thinking about architecture does not surpass the thinking that went into the Capsule Tower. And yet it's a building that's rejected by the very people it was designed to accommodate. The people of a tomorrow that is now.

The pics are by pict_u_re.