Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事 by Yang Tian

Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事 by Yang Tian is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 A' Design Award 铁奖 in 平面、插画与视觉传达设计 Competition Category.

铁平面· 2025

Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事

by Yang Tian

A' Design Award 铁奖 Winner in 平面 Category

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The Design

About Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事

为重新定义战后日本的现代性，新陈代谢派中最年轻的成员——黑川纪章，将现代住宅想象为一枚枚有机细胞：它们能移动、消化、生长、衰败，映照出一个人们不再栖居于固定空间的新社会。《展开的中银故事》以报纸为媒介，记录并延展这种“新陈代谢”的想象。在一张张被“展开”的纸页之间，
城市的故事被重新编织——在褶皱中生长、在时间中呼吸。

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award 铁奖

Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事是 A' Design Award 铁奖得主，这是授予满足人们对设计精良的创作所期待的专业与工业要求的优良设计的声望认可。铁奖得主展现出其创作者的高超技艺、高度专业化、专家级的理解力和创造能力。预计Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事将成为一件备受推崇、令人钦佩且被珍爱的创作，既实用又创新。这件赢得 A' Design Award 铁奖的设计整合了行业最佳实践，并拥有与专业知识和才华相结合的称职技术特性。Unfolding A Nakagin Story 展开的中银故事因其严谨而受到尊重，旨在提供有助于让世界变得更美好的生活品质改善。

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!