What is the afterlife of a demolished building?

Through the digitalization of architectural practice and culture, we have witnessed a shift from representation to simulation, from drawing to image. This shift in architectural media also affects how images relate to built architecture. As design and construction are increasingly mediated through digital operations, images are increasingly shaping our physical environments. Our research focuses on the shift from representation to simulation found in the operations of translation between digital to physical and back.

We take the Nakagin Capsule Tower as an example to further explore the idea of lost and found in translation. While the building is physically demolished, it has become part of our collective memory and a central reference in the history of 20th-century architecture. Moreover, we argue for a new complementation of Metabolism in the post-digital era. With images and traces online, the building is not digested but translated and is still existing to some extent. The project mainly talks about the notion of translation, digestion, and Metabolism in architecture. Comparing the similarities between media ecology and architecture. We will present what it would look like if Metabolism happened in the post-digital era and what it is gonna be like if we reconstruct Nakagin Capsule Tower in 4 dimensions.