Esoteric Survey

For years I've had a childhood memory of playing in a space age bubble. I asked my mom and she had no idea what I was talking about. My deep digging on the web never provided any leads. I remembered it was in Rohr Park in Chula Vista, which also had a mini railroad. Last week, after talking to a friend who also had memories of the bubble, I decided to do another search. It paid off.   Source: Chula Vista Star News This is the one I played on. It was constructed in 1978.  It went by many names, such as Soap Bubble Castle, Bubble Maze, Curved Space Diamond System, or Curved Space Labyrinth. The Lexan plastic structure is a "nature-based, large scale, sculptural system that maps the geometry of a diamond crystal at approximately 16 billion times its actual size".  Peter Jon Pearce created the Curved Space Diamond System to demonstrate built environments patterned after natural structures. Much along the same lines as the  Metabolism ...

Shizuoka Press and Broadcasting Center (1967) by Kenzo Tange . This 12 story building was the first realization of Metabolism. T hirteen individual office modules are connected in clusters to a central core.   Like the Nakagin , the design allows for additional modules to be "plugged in". Source: Class Connection The Metabolist idea of the  structure growing, reproducing, and transforming in response to the environment has yet to happen for Shizuoka. No modules have been added since it opened in 1967.  I'm still optimistic. 

I went to Japan again. My first stop was the Nakagin Capsule Tower (1972) by Kisho Kurokawa .  It's located in the Shimbashi/Ginza area of Tokyo. The 14-story mixed-use residential and office tower has 140 detachable capsules around a central concrete core. The Nakagin was based on Metabolism and exchangeability and was a sustainable architecture prototype.  "The visions of Kurokawa Kisho, Kikutake Kiyonori, Maki Fumihiko, and other architects who had come under the influence of Tange Kenzo gave birth to an architectural movement that was called 'Metabolism.' The name, taken from the biological concept, came from an image of architecture and cities that shared the ability of living organisms to keep growing, reproducing, and transforming in response to their environments." - Metabolism: The City of The Future, Mori Art Museum   A capsule that was on display at Mori Art Museum's Metabolism Exhibition in 2011 and 2012. Source: Japa...