Sleep Capsules, or Microspace of Japanese Hotels

The solutions developed by Japanese architects to ensure an optimal ratio between the space size and the amount of time that a person spends gave rise to capsule hotels. The fair assumption of minimum time that a businessman needs to stay a night in a hotel has resulted in a maximum reduction in personal space. Japanese experiments in this field bring the combination of minimum time with minimum space to the absolute to be the basis of a capsule hotel concept. 

The appearance of capsule hotels was caused by objective reasons. Offices, banks and other commercial buildings were opened in central areas of major cities by the end of the 1960s when Japan performed an “economic miracle”. The largest scale of this process was seen in Tokyo. 

The number of houses was falling sharply, people were moving to remote areas or to the suburbs, and it became a very serious problem. The construction of mini-hotels was a kind of tactical move aimed to eliminate the situation. It was intended to provide people living far from the city center with places where they could sleep. 

The first Japanese capsule hotel – famous Nakagin Capsule Tower – was built by architect Kisho Kurokawa in Tokyo in 1972. And immediately it attracted a large number of businessmen due to its location so that “rooms” were never empty, and creative people used them as studios. The hotel consisted of 144 capsules with a volume of 4 × 2.5 × 2.5 m, which corresponds to the usual size of a Japanese tea room with six tatami. The capsule contained everything that a guest might need in a short period of time spent in the hotel – a set of necessary furniture and electrical appliances.

 Text: Nina Konovalova

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