Noritaka Minami has been photographing the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo for the past four years.

Minami’s series is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography July 9th through August 30th, 2015. An opening reception will take place on July 9th, 2015 from 7-8:30pm.

The architect Kisho Kurokawa completed the tower in 1972. “As a building attached with 140 removable apartment units, the Nakagin Capsule Tower embodies the future of urban living as envisioned by Kurokawa in postwar Japan,” states Minami. He also says that, “the building is a reminder of a future that was never realized in society at large and exists as an architectural anachronism within the city.“

Kurokawa’s plan was to mass-produce the capsules. Despite this, the tower is still one of a kind and will more than likely be demolished to make way for a more modern apartment complex. Each 10 foot square unit within the Nakagin Capsule Tower was built identically. Today the units are in various states depicting the personality and needs of the occupants. Minami photographs the apartments from a consistent frontal perspective that speaks to a passage of time and shows a diverted route from the foreseen path envisioned by the architect.

Noritaka Minami is an artist and educator based in Boston. He currently is a teaching fellow at Harvard University in Photography as well as a visiting faculty member at the Museum School. He received a BA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004 and a MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine in 2011. He has exhibited widely in the United States, was a recipient of an artist residency from the Center of Photography at Woodstock and his book “1972” will be published by Kehrer Verlag this year.