The capsule living unit reconsidered a Utopia transformed reality

• Main Authors: Michael, Gibert, Yaacob, Naziaty Mohd, Ali, Zuraini Md
• Format: Article
• Published: Universiti Putra Malaysia 2018
• Subjects: TH Building construction
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/21289/; http://www.pertanika.upm.edu.my/Pertanika%20PAPERS/JSSH%20Vol.%2026%20(3)%20Sep.%202018/11%20JSSH-1875-2016.pdf
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

The purpose of this paper is to seek a better understanding of why solely in Japan the concept of capsule living units has been perceived more than a mere utopia and seems to have “made sense” to a wide cultural audience as a possible housing alternative. For that purpose, a thorough literature review was conducted to bring about comprehensive understandings of this phenomenon through a historical review and a definition of the capsule as presented by the Metabolists in the 1960s, and through a comparison between its fundamentals and the one of its hypothetical ancestral precedent; the Japanese tea-hut.