This chapter first appeared as an article in SD (Space Design) magazine, in March 1969. The concept of the capsule arose from studies started in 1959, using the words 'unit space' and 'cell.' In this article I took an iconoclastic position in order to penetrate the existing order, break down architecture into units for individuals and then seek to establish a new order. This thesis also relates to the quest for a new image of man and a new community amidst the flux of contemporary society, which are central points to my book Homo Mavens, published in September of the same year.

Article 1

The capsule is cyborg¹ architecture. Man, machine and space build a new organic body which transcends confrontation. As a human being equipped with a man-made internal organ becomes a new species which is neither machine nor human, so the capsule transcends man and equipment. Architecture from now on will increasingly take on the character of equipment. This new elaborate device is not a 'facility,' like a tool, but is a part to be integrated into a life pattern and has, in itself, an objective existence.

The word 'capsule' usually conjures up either a capsule containing medicine or the living quarters of an astronaut. The capsule referred to here is a capsule without which what is contained in it would be perfectly meaningless. For example, a spaceship is such a capsule. The capsule which protects the astronaut from space or from very high temperatures or other hazards differs in essence from containers such as coffee cups in that it creates an environment peculiar to itself. A rupture in the capsule, however small, would instantly upset the internal equilibrium and destroy the strictly controlled environment in it. Such a device and the life in it depend on each other for their existence and survival.

Almost all devices which have been introduced into human society since the Industrial Revolution perform the role of a tool. The automobile, for example, is a means of transport used in lieu of the horse. Electric power is a tool which gives light to man at night. These products of modern civilization are intended to make life more convenient. Cyborg architecture, on the other hand, is an object in itself. The human being in the capsule and the film which protects his life constitute a new existence which did not exist in the past.

Human beings may not actually have to be remodelled into cyborgs. Instead, they will equip themselves with various devices with which to perform complicated roles which are beyond their capabilities as living creatures. But without those devices they will be unable to perform their roles in society. A device which has become a living space itself in the sense that a man cannot hope to live elsewhere is a capsule. And signs of such a development are beginning to appear around us.

Article 2

A capsule is a dwelling of Homo mavens. The rate at which city dwellers move home in the United States is around 25 percent a year. Soon the rate in Japan will exceed 20 percent a year. Urban size can no longer be measured in terms of night-time (residential) population. The night-time population taken together with the day-time population, or the pattern of movement of the population throughout the day, will become the index of the features of city life. People will gradually lose their desire for property such as land and big houses and will begin to value having the opportunity and the means for free movement. The capsule means emancipation of a building from land and signals the advent of an age of moving architecture.

The disintegration of a community and the unusual upsurge in migration indicate the advent of capsule space as the new form of dwelling, in the shape, for example, of the mobile home. The future is anticipated in the fact that in the United States over 5 million people own mobile homes, and the mobile home has become so popular there that it is long past being regarded as a dwelling for gypsies or seasonal workers. Even a considerable number of white-collar workers live in mobile homes. In America today there are about 1,500 mobile home parks under public management. They are equipped with green areas, electricity, tap water and telephone lines. Anyone who parks a mobile home there can use public facilities in the same way as a town or city.

The growth in popularity of mobile homes can be explained partly by the unusual increase of population mobility in the United States. Because of the high fluidity of the labor market, there is a high level of mobility of workers from job to job. Workers often sell their homes and buy new ones in changing their jobs, but some workers own quite luxurious mobile homes and simply drive their homes to the new places of work. High mobility has become a pattern of life.

California has many trailer parks and the cities along the West Coast are designed for motorists with a large proportion of land given to roads. Low population density and the wide extent of city areas make this desirable.

A capsule dwelling can be seen as an expanded form of a house. For example, a car can be considered a room. People who spend much of their time out of their homes 'live' in their cars for a considerable part of their time. In recognition of this fact the car industry has made the interiors of automobiles luxurious, with stereos, reclining seats and air conditioners making a car become a compact room. The car is now no longer merely a means of transport; its interior space is beginning to take on architectural meaning. We are spending an increasing number of hours in cars and our desire to enjoy our time there stimulates the trend of cars to become extensions of dwellings.

If we assume that the capsule is a moving house of Homo mavens, it need not necessarily be a wheeled home like a mobile home. We should think, rather, in terms of what was considered a tool in the past being converted into architecture.

Changes in living conditions will also require capsulization of dwellings. J Fourastier said that an age would come when people need to work only four hours a week. Certainly, the time will soon come when we need not work as long as we do now, when the cycle of our daily life, which is based on the unit of a week, will change. The week will become shorter and the weekend develop and become more important. The week will consist of four days—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday—and the weekend of three days—Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The cycle of our life will be split into two, and we will spend the week in a stationary dwelling, such as a downtown apartment or home, and we will ride in a mobile capsule at the weekend and go to the seashore or mountains or countryside. The capsule will then be a necessity of daily life.

An interesting diversity in the pattern of our relaxation will also stimulate the capsulization of dwellings. The custom of having a fixed second house for recreation will gradually die out and leisure activities will become more diverse. People will begin to spend the summer in different places each year. A movable leisure house will then be more convenient than a conventional villa. Perhaps the house as permanent abode should be in a fixed place but if the choice exists most people would want to have second homes in different places each year. At any rate, it is unquestionable that the pattern of leisure activities will be increasingly dynamic in future.

A mobile home or something like that will therefore fit the need. It need not necessarily be a motor home molded as one piece. It may be a panel-type home which can be assembled on the spot by putting together twenty or thirty panels, like sliding doors, by simply tightening nuts and bolts. It can be considered a capsule of a technologically different category.

In the past, when an urban area in Japan had to be mapped out, it would be plotted on the basis of night-time population. But it often happened that a city plotted this way was almost empty in the day-time. The reasons may be many. People living in the suburbs may be in the centre of the town in the day-time to work or attend school. People registered as residents and as night-time population of a given area usually move about in a larger area. So we must re-examine a city to find the difference between the night-time and day-time populations or plot one populated in day-time only. We have to see the actual condition of Homo mavens as the dynamic condition of a city. For this purpose, we may have to consider the problem of what sort of space Homo mavens inhabits.

Trains in America used to be very much like houses. They were equipped with bedrooms, parlors, restaurants and even bars, as well as desks and telephones. They were moving houses with all the conveniences of modern civilization. They may be called capsules because people lived in them and moved in them. And with jumbo jets a large number of people spend much of their time in the air and entrust their lives to a capsule.

Thus, there are two forms of capsulization. In one, a dwelling becomes a tool and is capsulized. In the other, tools or devices, such as automobiles, trains and aircraft, become dwellings and are capsulized.

A stately mansion with a large tract of land is a status symbol today but in the future the space and tools for free movement will be the status symbols.

Article 3

The capsule suggests a diversified society. We strive for a society where maximum freedom for individuals is sanctioned and where there is a wide range of options. In an age when organizations and society determined the city space, the infrastructure formed the physical environment of the city. In contrast, the capsule expresses the individuality of an individual—his challenge to an organization and his revolt against unification.

When we examine the various forecasts for the future, we find a polarization of views. At one extreme, a highly organized society is posited and at the other, a highly diversified society. Teilhard de Chardin, in Man as Phenomenon, visualized a convergence of mankind one million years from now into what is called Point Omega. In Future of Man, Medawar envisaged a heterogeneous society where all of its members are highly individualized and evolving in different directions.

I believe that our society will be and should be diversified. A society in which the individual is happy is one in which each person can display his individuality and yet social order is maintained, where greater freedom and a larger variety of options are possible. However, this cannot be achieved without examining the balance between the individual and society.

This problem pertains to technical forecasts of future societies. When we consider the process by which an urban society is designed or its environments formed, we find that it is not mechanically created by city planners or architects through the application of technology. For example, roads, energy and communications are communal systems but are nothing more than that. They support human activities but are, so to speak, 'generators' which goad man to demand a freer life. A generator cannot be the goal of life, the construction of a road cannot be the goal of society—the Shinkansen, the 'Bullet Train,' a standard-gauge high-speed railway line, is only a social service. Such things are only facilities and goads to man to endeavor to construct a more diversified society.

Future society should be constituted of mutually independent individual spaces, determined by the free will of individuals. Systems are necessary but our policy should be to develop the possibility of acquiring greater spaces for individuals on the basis of system, not one to reduce the spaces for individuals to conformity through the instrument of system. Given this proposition, each space should be a highly independent shelter where the inhabitant can fully develop his individuality. Such space is a capsule. This is the meaning of the proposition that the capsule aims at a diversified society.

The capsule is planned for perfectly free action, formed for perfectly free movement. The system, too, has its own type of movement. The movements of the capsule and the movements of the system are sometimes contradictory and sometimes coincide. The growth of the system sometimes triggers the grouping of capsules. In other words, the theory of multiple structure—that a system (and its units which are generated in the system) should have its independent laws of motion—also applies here.

Article 4

The capsule is intended to institute an entirely new family system centered on individuals. The housing unit based on a married couple will disintegrate, and the family relationships between a couple, parents and children will be expressed in terms of the state of docking of many capsules of individuals' spaces.

If we are to look for space where the creative spirit of individuals is given free play we will have to reconsider the nature of our housing. In pre-war Japan, where there was an extended family system based on patriarchy, the most important space in a house was the space where the paterfamilias received guests. The drawing room was more important than the living room of the family. The room where the family ate and slept was on the less attractive northern side of the house. Since the war it has become the norm to regard the married couple as the most important part of the household and now the center of the house is the bedroom and living room of the couple, with spaces for children built later as additional units.

However, the housing of the future will be, I think, an aggregate of spaces for individuals. The existence of a married couple presupposes the existence of individuals but not vice versa. Individuals, both male and female, have capsules of their own when they are single. When a man and a woman marry, they will furnish their respective spaces to form a necessary space for themselves as individuals—living space for the couple will not be provided first and rooms added later for individuals around it. A living room comes into being when a minimum necessary unit space which enables an individual to live as an individual encounters with another such unit space and facilities for common use are born. When I designed a housing capsule for the Theme Pavilion of Expo '70, I intended to create a house which would come into existence when such spaces for individuals are mass-produced and grouped together.

If a household forms an aggregate of individuals, the landscape of future cities will be determined, not by expressways or skyscrapers, but by a colossal aggregate of individual unit spaces. Certainly, such housing will be a far cry from the traditional 'home sweet home.' But I do not mean that the love between husband and wife or between parents and children will be neglected. Rather, the new concept is aimed at abolishing the housing unit centered on the married couple or parents and children and establishing a new idea of a household which attaches importance to the encounter of spaces for individuals.

Article 5

The true home for capsule dwellers, where they feel they belong and where they satisfy their inner, spiritual requirements, will be the metapolis. If the result of the docking of capsules is called a household, then docking capsules and communal space forms social space. The plaza as a religious space, symbol of authority or setting for commercial transactions disintegrates, and the public space with which individuals identify themselves will make the metapolis the new quasi-domestic haven. A self-sufficient community where the daily round is completed within a closed circle will perish. A haven will become a spiritual domain transcending concrete everyday space.

For, if people acquire such capsule spaces and begin to move more freely, will they still not need a spiritual haven? Otherwise one might suppose that frustration might drive them insane. Will not the concept of an 'ancestral home' totally die out in such an age?

The idea of the family home is still a strong one to many Japanese in urban areas. The overwhelming majority of today's urban population are second-generation city people but their parents or grandparents came to the cities from surrounding agricultural areas. This is common to all cities, not Tokyo alone. The concept is strong even though not all such city-dwellers have a family home where their parents or grandparents live. The average Japanese city-dweller's notion of a family home is very abstract. He would put it in this way: 'I'm told that my ancestors came from Kyushu, but I have neither an ancestral tomb nor a home in Kyushu.'

The notion of family home will become increasingly abstract hereafter. Man will become correspondingly less capable of great mobility without some spiritual support or spiritual haven to take the place of his concept of a family home—notwithstanding the greater convenience or physical comfort. The more mobile man becomes, the greater his longings for a haven.

When we search for it, we first think of nature. Nature is a more abstracted form of family home than such individual birthplaces as Kyushu or Hokkaido, and the feeling for nature is closely akin to that for a family home. The feeling which a city-dweller entertains about nature is an abstract form of his feelings about his family home.

I feel, however, that men's spiritual haven in a future community will take a slightly different form. I think that men living in a city are going to build a new one. The feeling which people show when flocking to a plaza or square or taking part in a demonstration or holding a festival seems to reveal what such a spiritual haven might be.

The response which men feel in such a place differs from the family-home-consciousness evoked by nature in that it is created by the sharing of a certain common social space. It is manifest where many people live together instead of separately in isolated places. It is a repose which one finds in the midst of a large city. While the home consciousness is identified with some specific region or community, the spiritual repose which one finds in a large city is related to human solidarity, the equipment of the city or a symbolic space in the city.

Then what type of urban space can furnish such repose?

A public space, terminal, department store, hotel or university campus can serve. All these places are where a large number of people flock together and where, in a sense, the architecturalization of the street is found. A facility in which a city-dweller can find repose should be one which permits multiple choices. Take a hotel for example. There one can put up for the night, meet other people, hold a conference, give a wedding ceremony, or swim in a pool. The development of such a multi-purpose space is progressing in hotels, and it can be said that hotels are becoming the center of a capsule space and a new spiritual haven.

How about universities? At present, campuses are spaces within a city but separated from the whole. However, universities will increasingly take on the character of cities in the future. Universities will cease to be spaces where only the elite study but will be socially open. Campuses will no longer be places for research and education alone but will become forums for the public, housing for the students and parks at the same time. They will increasingly become multi-purpose spaces.

A Japanese department store functions as an adult education area and as a place where a large variety of activities are possible. The width of choice will become a very important factor of an information center or a space for common use. Our department stores provide a variety of data on such things as current trends in school education, cooking, new fashions and new household appliances. If an art exhibition is being held there, you come into contact with the latest trends in fine arts. Like the agora of a Greek city, a department store today is a multi-purpose information center and a place of public entertainment.

A terminal is the junction of different means of public transport, and a large number of people meet or at least encounter each other there. Because such shopping and leisure facilities as department stores are usually built at terminals, there are ample opportunities for a terminal to grow into a space for common use for capsules.

In large cities of the future, a large number of new-style plazas and squares, a large number of new-style homes, will come into being where individual capsules will be docked to each other and create a social space. Such space may be called a haven within a city, as opposed to a haven outside the city, remote from the city.

The conventional community centers of public hall, park and marketplace will then lose their place as the center of city life. Independently of such spaces for daily life, a starting point of spiritual life—an information center—will come into existence, and a new type of community where individuals flock together will emerge. Such a community may be called a 'temporal community' as opposed to the conventional regional community.

Article 6

The capsule is a feedback mechanism in an information-oriented, a 'technetronic'² society. It is a device which permits us to reject undesired information. Our society is emerging from the industrial age and entering a technetronic age. The industrial pattern based on the manufacturing industries is changing into one based on information industries, such as the knowledge industry, education industry, research industry, publishing industry, advertising industry and leisure industry. To protect us from the flood of information and the one-way traffic in information, we should have a feedback mechanism and a mechanism which rejects unnecessary information. The capsule serves as such a space.

A technetronic society will not automatically form if the present information-processing system develops further on existing lines. Proof of this is to be found in current information media. Whether through television or radio or newspapers, a large amount of information flows to us from a central station. We can make a choice by turning the channel knob on the TV receiver, and this is probably the only choice we have, but we cannot totally reject the deluge of information. In the present age, we cannot totally reject such information, and still less is it possible to issue instructions to the key station to send only such information as we want to have, because we have no feedback mechanism.

Just as an astronaut is protected by a perfect shelter from solar winds and cosmic rays, individuals should be protected by capsules in which they can reject information they do not need and in which they are sheltered from information they do not want, thereby allowing an individual to recover his subjectivity and independence.³

Footnotes

1. 'Cyborg': a cybernated organism, hence an organism which is partly automated, based on feedback and information processes; usually appears in science fiction as half man, half machine.

2. This term is taken from Zbigniew Brzezinski's Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Viking Press, New York 1970. It is a contraction of 'technological' and 'electronic.'

3. The capsule is defined as a space which guarantees complete privacy for the individual. It assures the physical and spiritual independence of the individual.

‍