Press Release

New Release Kehrer Verlag
Noritaka Minami
1972
Texts by Noritaka Minami, Julian Rose, Ken Yoshida
Hardcover
24 x 28 cm
100 Pages
54 Color ills.
English
ISBN 978-3-86828-548-2
34,90 Euro
Rare views of the minimal appartments of the legendary Japanese Capsule Tower
Completed in the year 1972, Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule
Tower is one of the few visionary proposals realized by an avantgarde architectural movement called Metabolism. An experimental apartment complex designed with 140 removable capsules, this building in Tokyo embodies the future of urban living
as envisioned by Kurokawa at that moment in postwar Japan.
More importantly, it is a reminder of a future that was never realized in society at large and exists as an architectural anachronism within the city. In recent years, the building has faced
the threat of demolition to make way for a more conventional
structure. In the book 1972, Noritaka Minami uses photography
to document the current state of individual capsules as a response to their potential disappearance. The photographs examine what became of a building that first opened as a radical
prototype for a new mode of living in post-industrial society and
how this vision of the future appears in retrospect.
Ken Yoshida is Assistant Professor of Visual Culture in the
Global Arts Studies Program at the University of California,
Merced.
Julian Rose is Senior Editor of Artforum and a Founding Principal
of the design studio Formlessfinder.
Exhibition
Griffin Museum of Photography
Winchester, Massachusetts
09.07 – 31.08. 2015
Noritaka Minami is an artist based in Boston and Los Angeles.
He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004
where he studied Art Practice and Asian American Studies. In
2011, he completed a M.F.A. in Studio Art at the University of
California, Irvine with an emphasis in the Visual Studies
Program. Minami is interested in applying the medium of
photography as a means of investigating history and memory
associated with site .
Please note:
These photographs have been copyright cleared for worldwide print and electronic reproduction in the context of reviews of the book only.
No more than THREE photographs plus the cover image from
the selection can be used in total – they are not to be used
on the cover or cropped. Images 1-4 may only be published
as diptychs!
For further details, press images, permissions and review
copies, please contact the publisher’s press office:
Beate Kury, [email protected] or
Kathrin Szymikowski, [email protected]
Kehrer Verlag, Wieblinger Weg 21, 69123 Heidelberg, Germany
Fon ++49 (0)6221/649 20-25, Fax ++49 (0)6221/64920-20
www.kehrerverlag.com www.artbooksheidelberg.com
Press Images Overview
01a_Untitled
© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami
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© Noritaka Minami