While some of their ideas, like composable, modular buildings are even more feasible and relevant now, given how much fabrication occurs offsite these days, the aesthetics of the buildings can seem painfully dated (see the capsule building).
If we were to compare Metabolism to Brutalism, another mid-90s architectural movement and style, we can see how the motivations behind an aesthetic can influence it's staying power. To the Metabolists, they were making a big, provocative art project. Their goal was to envision a future, in all their violent masculinity.
In contrast, the Brutalists were concerned with providing the most practical solutions to modern problems. They did things like bordering a compound with a specifically shaped wall to limit the noise pollution of those new 'highway things,' or revealing the pipes to the inhabitants to create a sense of honest construction at a time when the workings of buildings were hidden in the service of form.
I'd argue that the Brutalist structures remain practical so long as the problems they set out to solve remain, but that the Metabolist buildings were impractical from the start because they were never meant to be.
Huh. My understanding is that brutalism's claimed emphasis on practicality was kind of a pose, and that it was more of a competition to see who could be the most anti-bourgeois, to the extent that the working class hated living in honest, unpretentious brutalist public housing since it was so uncomfortable.
As an added bonus the rise of brutalism and international style, and the attendant disdain for intricate and expensive craftsmanship in favor of honest mass-produced clean lines, put a bunch of working-class craftsmen out of work.
Of course, I got all this from one read of From Bauhaus to Our House, so it's a little prejudiced.
I never considered that the move away from ornaments might be a net negative on working class jobs. That's a little chilling.
_From Bauhaus to our House_ was published in 81 (near the end of the movement), so it's completely possible that Brutalism had strayed from it's original ethos by then.
Still, outside the book, it should be noted that some of the recent backlash against the style is based on looking at an unmaintained building, and then blaming it for crime rates etc, conveniently ignoring other soci-economic factors.
Also, one of the flaws/features of the style was that since you're showing the materials, they needed to be high-quality and maintained. You couldn't just paint over cracks. This means that they're sensitive to neglect, and often, they were.
I'd be interested to see how "livable" the Metabolist buildings could be in practice, regardless of the form they would have to take to make that feasible. I think Brutalism works well in areas were strength, authority and a "straight edge" are required but is far from an answer to the modern ills of the urban environment, outside of a few cities in a few countries.
