Life in a capsule

Small, residential, equipped, inexpensive housing is the dream of many residents of megacities. The Japanese were the first to succeed in building such residential complexes or hotels. They can be understood, there is not much land, large cities are especially overpopulated and saving space is welcome. But not only in Japan you can find interesting capsule houses, but also in Europe: in Germany and the Netherlands, similar houses are provided to students during their studies.

Netherlands.

Two designers and architects from Rotterdam, Mart de Jong and Kathy Klüver, came up with a prefabricated but functional housing - Spacebox.

Which was very attractive to the management of one of the universities as a dormitory for Dutch students, who, in turn, very often have the question “Where to live?”

Spacebox

Spacebox is a cube-shaped container house with one room, a full-wall window and a door on the opposite side of the window. The internal area can be 18 or 22 square meters. The house has everything necessary for the life of one person: a kitchenette with electric stove and refrigerator, toilet and shower, lighting, electric heating, ventilation.

Spacebox houses can be stacked one on top of the other and form a maximum of three-story buildings.

The main thing for such a house is to level the ground, connect communications and lay a shallow concrete foundation with steel fastenings. The Spacebox container house weighs only 2.5 tons and can be delivered by truck and lifted into place by a relatively small crane.

Germany.

Germany is also concerned that students at many universities simply have nowhere to live. An experiment was launched at one of the student institutes in Munich.

Seven cubes measuring seven were installed on campus square meters in which you can live called “O2-Village”.

Only seven things fit in the house: two beds, a kitchen, a toilet, a shower, a work desk and a place to receive guests, of whom there can only be five people.

But the residents of the innovative house do not complain at all about the lack of space, because everything in the house can be moved out and retracted, and the huge windows do not allow the resident to feel walled up.

House O2 from the inside

Japan.

Japan is ahead of the world when it comes to housing in capsule houses. For example, now they are building houses in areas damaged by the tsunami.

Construction of new houses after the tsunami

And in the big cities of Japan, capsule hotels are very common, popular with managers of nearby offices who have a long way to get home. Managers can spend the night in such hotels for weeks. But there is also a capsule house in Japan.

Capsule hotel

The house was built in the 1970s according to the design of Kurokawa Kisho and was named “Nakagin Capsule Tower”.

Nakagin Capsule Tower

The principle of the capsule building is based on the fact that countless “boxes” of the same size are attached around two steel pillars, as if they were a huge corn. There are more than a hundred “boxes” and these are capsule apartments.

Construction of a capsule house

The size of each “box” is: length 2.3 meters, width 3.8 meters, height 2.1 meters, and in the very center of the structure there is a large round window.

Construction principle

The building has elevators, air conditioning, piping, all collected in one place - in two central steel pillars.

We talk about how life works in a “capsule” - small space up to a maximum of 10 square meters, which includes everything: a kitchen, a shower, a toilet, and a bedroom.

Metabolism in architecture

A conversation about capsule buildings cannot be started without a background history of the architectural movement that gave birth to them. The idea of ​​metabolic architecture originated in Japan in the 50s. It is based on the principle of individual development of a living organism and coevolution (joint evolution biological species, interacting in the ecosystem). Metabolic architects sought to create flexible space with a large number of cells. They perceived the city as a living organism with all its inherent processes. According to metabolists, architecture should not be static and it is necessary to ensure that building elements can be replaced over time. The first embodiment of this idea was the famous Nakagin Tower.

Nakagin Tower in Tokyo

Tokyo Nakagin Tower was designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1972. The building consists of two interconnected 11- and 13-story towers containing 140 prefabricated capsule modules. Each of the capsules is a separate apartment or office. Moreover, the size of each capsule is very small - only 10 square meters. At the same time, they can all be combined to create more space. All capsules are furnished and are somewhat similar to modern studios: they have a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom fit into one block, and the windows are round. Nakagin was intended as a symbol of harmony and progress - all cells can be replaced as they wear out, so that the building serves for a long time. In 2007, residents voted to demolish the tower, dissatisfied with the size of the rooms and the asbestos content of the walls. Kurokawa, who wanted to preserve his creation, volunteered to redesign it, but the project was later postponed due to the crisis.

In 2010, photographer Noritaka Minami visited the tower and spent four years photographing its interior and exterior to document how the idea of ​​metabolic architecture lives on in modern times. “The capsule is a container that has accumulated all the changes and decisions made by people over four decades. I did not include the occupants of a specific space in the images, but I wanted each photograph to suggest a history and the presence of people who occupy or occupied this space,” said the photographer. The building was originally designed for “sararimans,” the name given to middle-class city employees in post-war Japan. Now clerks also live in the house, but many of them use the capsules as offices or apartments for a while working week, since the tower is located near business center Tokyo.

Capsule hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg

In Russia, the principle of organizing space using capsules was first implemented in 2013. Then the first capsule hotel “Sleepbox Hostel” opened in Moscow. It consisted of “slipboxes” of the same name - 50 modular capsule rooms. Each of them is designed for one, two or three guests. Bathroom and toilet are shared. The capsules were wooden, with a single or double bed inside. Essentially, a capsule hotel is an alternative to a hostel, where you don’t have to wake up to your neighbors snoring. In total, this hotel was able to accommodate 120 people. It is now closed.

In 2017, another capsule hotel opened on Stary Tolmachevsky Lane - Compass, built on approximately the same principle with the only difference being that a metal roller blind with a lock was built into the capsule, and inside there was also a bed and a lamp with an outlet. Subsequently, the project was also closed.

Of the capsule hostels currently operating in Moscow, Qube on Shlyuzovaya Embankment, a night there costs from 1,000 rubles. Inside each capsule there is lighting, a socket, a mirror, a shelf, a sleeping place and hooks for clothes. Otherwise, everything is the same as in regular hostels - shared bathroom, toilet and kitchen.

Those who watched the film “The Fifth Element” remembered the spaceship, where passengers were placed in sort of “capsules”. But few people know that they were not invented by Luc Besson: back in 1972, Kurokawa’s project in Tokyo, Nakagin Capsule Tower, became one of the first “capsule” type buildings to be implemented.

In the 1960s, Kise Kurokawa became one of the founders of the architectural metabolism movement. This direction immediately gained popularity. In contrast to the dominant theory of Le Corbusier at that time (buildings as “machines for living”), metabolists perceived the city as a living organism with all its processes. They divided it into permanent and temporary elements - bones, blood vessels and living cells that change over time.

Nakagin Tower is the living embodiment of this theory. In it, individual parts of apartments (with built-in furniture, bathrooms, etc.) with an area of ​​4 by 2.5 m are fixed to concrete frame with just four bolts.

Such a “capsule” is easy to replace as it wears out: they are manufactured at the factory and installed in place using a crane. Today the tower is included in the Docomomo International World Architectural Heritage List, and a copy of one of the “capsules” in life size Nowadays it is visited by numerous tourists.

The famous Nakagin Tower in Tokyo, built in 1972 by Kise Kurokawa, consists of 144 steel capsules, each of which represents a real microcosm.

The “room” has everything a person might need in the short period of time he spends at the hotel: bed, wardrobe, bathroom, air conditioning, stove, telephone, TV, folding desk, sockets for all kinds electronic devices, necessary business people.

The size of the capsule, 2.5 x 4 x 2.5 meters, corresponds to the usual Japanese size of a tea room of six tatami.

According to a custom dating back centuries, you must take off your shoes before entering the capsule, just like in a traditional Japanese house and in a traditional Japanese hotel.

Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, Japan, 1972.

A few details outside the capsules themselves:

Plans and sections of the Nakagin Tower:

In Japan, a country of extraordinary technical inventions, back in the 1970s, a trend arose to minimize sleeping space. The famous Japanese architect Kurokawa Kise created the first capsule hotel in 1979 in Osaka - Capsule Inn Osaka.

Today there are capsule hotels in both small towns and large metropolitan areas of Japan - Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo. In Tokyo, for example, there are about forty capsule hotels with 700 capsule rooms.

The rooms are miniature in size - 1 m x 1.75 m - containing a bed and a small TV, equipped only with a radio and an alarm clock.

The rest of the amenities are at the end of the corridor.

It is impossible to stand up to your full height in such a number.

In addition, there are no doors in the capsule; only a thin curtain separates the bed from the corridor. Exterior view:

View of the curtain from the inside:

And despite this, capsule hotels are still popular to this day. The price per night here ranges from $20 to $40, while in ordinary mid-level city hotels it is $70 and above.

Modern Japanese architects are looking for the optimal balance between required sizes space and the small amount of time that guests spend in the hotel. A revision of the attitude towards the organization of the personal space of a hotel resident has led to its maximum reduction. Japanese experiments in this area have perfected the combination of minimal time with minimal space to the absolute. This is how capsule-type hotels appeared.

The largest capsule hotel in Japan, Green Plaza Shinjuku in Tokyo, consists of 660 capsules that offer guests a much smaller personal space. The size of the capsule in this hotel is 1 x 2 x 1 meters - in the “room” you can only sit or lie down.

To spend leisure time in this position, each capsule is equipped with a TV mounted in the ceiling and electrical sockets. This unique Japanese invention is called the “sleep capsule”.

It should be noted that in such hotels it is customary to divide space into two types: general and individual, which inevitably follows from their very organization. A mandatory feature of capsule hotels of this type is a large public space.

A hall, a relaxation room with the latest press, a bar, a sauna, and sometimes a swimming pool, exist specifically for communication. A significant area of ​​public space contrasts sharply with the microcosm of individual capsules.

The rules for guests in all capsule hotels are the same. When entering the hall, you need to take off your shoes and place them in a special locker that can be locked with a key. Items are placed in a storage room.

As a result, the guest receives three keys (for shoes, things and his sleeping place) and, squeezing into his “cell”, can lower the bamboo blinds and isolate himself from the outside world.

The interior of the capsules in all hotels is designed in caramel color, which has a calming effect on nervous system a person in a small confined space.

Several capsule hotels have been built in major cities in Japan. They are very convenient for employees who miss the train or stay late at work and are attractive due to their low cost. There is one more feature in these hotels. By unspoken rule, capsule hotels are intended for men. And although some of them provide one floor for women, this is rather an exception, and in any case, entry into the “male territory” is strictly prohibited for them.

Currently, capsule hotels, like many other Japanese inventions, have begun to penetrate into Europe (for example, the Yotels hotels in England). True, the capsules are made for two people, and the usual size of capsules for the Japanese seems unacceptable to Europeans, and projects for “rooms” with an area of ​​less than 10 square meters are not even considered.

After all, traditional japanese house never existed in isolation from living nature - he was, as it were, a continuation of it. And then the Japanese architectural geniuses (Kurokawa, Tange, Isozaki, Kikutake, etc.) came up with the concept of a house-organism - and even a city-organism, which is not built once and for all, but, like a living structure, can change: grow, develop, replace “dead cells” into new ones, etc. The textbook examples of such a building are the “Sky House” by the architect Kikutake, reminiscent of the traditional Japanese “minka” housing with its cellular layout, as well as the famous Nagakin Tower (Kurokawa), in which “apartments”, consisting of small capsule rooms with built-in furniture, can be updated with fresh cells as they wear out (to be fair, it is worth noting that so far no one is in a hurry to do this, and the owners of the house are even proposing to build a completely new building on the site of the tower). Nevertheless, this so-called meta-principle in architecture (the combination of capital structures with temporary replaceable elements) remains relevant to this day - as a universal system of city development, taking into account its desire for free distribution.
This is not fantasy!
It should be noted that in the distant 60s and 70s, the futuristic inventions of Japanese architects produced the effect of a bomb exploding.
http://sob.ru/issue1198.html

Chronology of Kurokawa's works:

1962 Kurokawa develops a capsule housing project, implemented in Tokyo Nakagin Tower.
1972 Nakagin Apartment Building in Tokyo. This is an asymmetrical syncopated cluster that remains unmistakably Japanese despite the modernity of its emphatically metabolic forms.
1974 Summer house Kurokawa in Karuizawa is an example of capsule architecture.
http://www.tsuab.ru/_1pic/encycl/012/kurokawa.html

A unique project to create a compact and mobile “green” house, which is powered only by renewable energy from the sun and wind, has reached next stage. EcoCapsule is now available for pre-orders at company website, and supplies of ready-made residential modules The first buyers are planned for the end of 2016 - beginning of 2017.

Previously we reported that the autonomous eco-house is the product of the Slovak startup Nice Architects, headquartered in Bratislava. A non-volatile “house” is a mobile compact structure that provides relatively comfortable accommodation for one or two people, and absolutely does not require connection to any central communications.

The eco-capsule is equipped with all the essentials for a long stay. It contains small kitchen, bathroom with toilet and shower, pull-out bed, as well as additional compartments for storing things and various household needs. The non-volatile “egg” - and this is exactly the shape of the capsule - contains only about 8 m2 of living space, but thanks to the thoughtful design there is no shortage of space.

Its autonomy is ensured thanks to integrated roof solar panels power 600 W. In case solar energy is not enough, there is also a 750-watt wind turbine, mounted on a telescopic support, which is easily assembled during transportation.

The unique spherical shape of the Ecocapsule not only minimizes heat loss, but also provides one of the most important things for autonomous housing - rainwater collection. Water collected in this way in a special tank and undergoing two-stage filtration becomes completely drinkable.

Nice Architects believes their portable low-energy eco-house will come in handy various fields human life - it can become, for example, an independent research station, a mobile tourist house, a refuge for natural disasters, temporary housing for humanitarian missions and perform many other functions.

As for the cost of the Ecocapsule, the first customers will be able to receive it at a price of almost 80 thousand euros, and this does not take into account delivery costs. The first batch will be limited to only 50 copies and for now only residents of the European Union and associated countries will be able to buy them. However, the manufacturer promises that the cost of “eco-houses” will be significantly reduced in the future, which will also be facilitated by optional equipment.

New Year's Eve is a time to dream and reflect on the future. One of the ideas from such a future is capsule housing designed for permanent residence, which is not yet available in Russia. The likelihood of its appearance in our country depends only on you and me. If there is a demand on our part for housing of this type, then, undoubtedly, it will inevitably appear. And why not? It was once a wonder for us to see photos of capsule hotels in Japan. And now you can already stay in a similar hotel in some Russian cities.

It should also be clarified that thinking about capsule housing is not an idle fantasy. This type of it already exists in quite a large number of countries. So why shouldn’t he appear in Russia?

What is capsule housing?

A characteristic feature of capsule housing is that it costs significantly less than any studio apartment, while its location is usually an urban center.

What could a capsule home be like for permanent residence? This is a very small cozy room, which has:

• big window;
• air conditioner;
• comfortable bed;
• table and other items and equipment that provide the necessary comfort of living.

Conceptually, a capsule apartment can be:

• with a full or almost complete set of amenities;

• with amenities that are shared with other residents of the floor or house.

If the first concept raises virtually no questions, then for the second it makes sense to give some explanations. The fact is that in houses that combine capsule apartments with a minimum set of amenities, toilets, bathrooms, kitchens and spacious living rooms are common to everyone. Moreover, servicing of all these places is carried out by general house maintenance services.

On the ground floor of such a house there may be a cheap canteen, similar to what we had in Soviet times, but modernized in terms of design and service. Part of the floor can also be allocated for a shared laundry room. This arrangement makes it possible to satisfy the needs of the residents of the capsule house, as well as those people who live in the neighborhood.

Financial side of the issue

Taking into account dimensional minimalism, it is easy to understand that the purchase of such housing will cost potential buyers significantly less than the purchase of a one-room apartment.

If the owner of capsule housing decides to rent it out, he can do this without difficulty, because:

• the apartment, as mentioned above, is located in the always in demand central part of the city;
• Due to the fairly low cost of housing, he will not have to charge high rent.

Who may need capsule housing and why?

The demand for capsule apartments will certainly be driven not only by a lack of money, but also by people’s newly formed needs for their lifestyle. What categories of citizens might show interest in such housing? These will probably be:

• whose life plans do not include starting a family;
• who wants to have a personal cozy corner near work, while maintaining a large and comfortable family home somewhere on the outskirts of the city or beyond;
• who wants to have a permanent refuge filled with comfort in a foreign city, where they have to come periodically, etc.

Thus, capsule housing is of undoubted interest. It has already proven its vital necessity in many countries of the world. Whether or not he will be in Russia depends only on the Russians themselves and their needs.

I’m curious, what do you think about capsule apartments? Does this type of housing seem attractive to you? We will be glad to hear your point of view, which you can always express in your comments.