Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat by Yang Tian

Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat by Yang Tian is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 A' Design Award i Jern in Grafikk, illustrasjon og visuell kommunikasjonsdesign Competition Category.

JernGrafikk· 2025

Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat

by Yang Tian

A' Design Award i Jern Winner in Grafikk Category

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Verified Award Winner

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View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat

For å reidentifisere Japans modernitet etter krigen forestiller Kisho Kurokawa, det yngste medlemmet av Metabolisme-gruppen, seg moderne boliger som individuelle celler. De beveger seg, fordøyer, vokser og forfaller, og danner grunnlag for et nytt samfunn der mennesker ikke lenger bor i et fast rom. Unfolding a Nakagin Story bruker avisen som medium for å dokumentere og utvide denne metabolistiske forestillingen gjennom utfolding for å skape en urban historie.

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award i Jern

Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat er vinner av A' Design Award i Jern, en prestisjefylt anerkjennelse som tildeles gode design som oppfyller de profesjonelle og industrielle kravene man forventer av veldesignede skaperverk. Jernvinnere viser stor dyktighet, høy spesialisering, ekspertforståelse og kreativ kapasitet hos skaperne. Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat forventes å være et høyt ansett, beundret og verdsatt skaperverk som er praktisk og nyskapende. Dette designet, som har vunnet A' Design Award i Jern, integrerer bransjens beste praksis og har kompetente tekniske egenskaper knyttet til kunnskap og talent. Unfolding A Nakagin Story Avisplakat respekteres for sin grundighet og er utformet for å gi forbedringer i livskvalitet som bidrar til å gjøre verden til et bedre sted.

Behind the Design

Press Kit

Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.

Unique Properties: To re-identify Japan’s Modernity after the war, Kisho Kurokawa, the youngest Metabolism group member, imagines modern housing as individual cells. They move, digest, grow, and decay, informing a new society where people no longer live in a fixed space. Unfolding a Nakagin Story uses the newspaper as a medium to document and expand this Metabolism imagination, through “unfolding” to fabricate an urban story.
Dimensions & Packaging: Cover: 8" X 12"

Newspaper: 16" x 24"
Tags: Nakagin, Metabolism, Heritage, Housing, Urbanism
Production Technology: Graphics are done in Photoshop and Illustrator, the architecture is modeled in Rhino with a grasshopper plugin to change patterns and orientation.
Design Challenge: How can we capture the concept of Metabolism, where buildings can grow and shrink over time? How should I identify individual differences while the building comprises the same rectangular blocks? These are the two biggest challenges I need to solve. By using newspaper as the medium, one can feel the growth through unfolding the paper. One can also read individual stories despite repeating units by showing the interior information of selected blocks.
Research: Focusing on post-war Japanese architecture, Metabolism was the most influential architectural movement from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. Kisha Kurokawa changed the Western design ideology of FORM (ETERNAL) based living style to TIME (CHANGING) based living space. The Nakagin Capsule Tower is an iconic architecture that not only embraces ephemeral but also changes a collective to an individual-oriented living style.
Inspiration: To embrace the idea of flexibility and updating, the newspaper is a great medium as a representation tool. Newspaper changes every day with new information and unfolding it to gain new information reinforces the idea of metabolism. By unfolding the project, each time, the capsule patterns, window colors, shapes, and orientation change within an oblique neutral grid.
Project Duration: Duration: 3 months

Location: Boston, MA, USA
Operation Flow: You could unfold it three times, each time, the capsule patterns, window colors, shapes, and orientation change within an oblique neutral grid, and 7 capsules have been highlighted to expose the interior activities of an individual with personal information next to it. Individual yet connected, neutral yet different for each capsule. You will experience the beauty of the Nakagin capsule tower after you unfold its stories!