Kisho Kurokawa in the context of "Urbanists"

Astana is the capital city of Kazakhstan. With a population of 1,423,726 within the city limits, it is the second-largest in the country after Almaty, which was the national capital until 1997. The city lies on the banks of the Ishim river in the north of Kazakhstan. It is located within the Akmola Region but administers itself. Initially founded as Aqmoly in 1830, the city was later renamed Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, and Aqmola before adopting the name Astana in 1998, which means "capital city" in Kazakh. In 2019, the city briefly adopted the name Nur-Sultan in honor of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, but it reverted to the name Astana in 2022.

Astana's history is marked by rapid growth, especially after becoming the capital. Its transformation into a modern and planned city was guided by a master plan designed by Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. Today, Astana is renowned for its futuristic architecture, housing key government institutions, including the Akorda Residence, the Parliament House, and the Supreme Court. It has become an important center for culture, education, and commerce in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

The Van Gogh Museum (Dutch pronunciation: [vɑŋˈɣɔx mʏˌzeːjʏm]) is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opened on 2 June 1973, and its buildings were designed by Gerrit Rietveld and Kisho Kurokawa.

The museum contains the largest collection of Van Gogh's paintings and drawings in the world. In 2017, the museum had 2.3 million visitors and was the most-visited museum in the Netherlands, and the 23rd-most-visited art museum in the world. In 2019, the Van Gogh Museum launched the Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, a technology-driven "immersive exhibition" on Van Gogh's life and works, which has toured globally.

Metabolism (Japanese: メタボリズム, Hepburn: metaborizumu; also shinchintaisha (新陳代謝)) was a post-war Japanese biomimetic architectural movement that fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth. It had its first international exposure during CIAM's 1959 meeting and its ideas were tentatively tested by students from Kenzo Tange's MIT studio.

During the preparation for the 1960 Tokyo World Design Conference, a group of young architects and designers, including Kiyonori Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa and Fumihiko Maki, prepared the publication of the Metabolism manifesto. They were influenced by a wide variety of sources, including Marxist theories and biological processes. Their manifesto was a series of four essays entitled: Ocean City, Space City, Towards Group Form, and Material and Man, and it also included designs for vast cities that floated on the oceans and plug-in capsule towers that could incorporate organic growth. Although the World Design Conference gave the Metabolists exposure on the international stage, their ideas remained largely theoretical.

A capsule hotel (Japanese: カプセルホテル, romanized: kapuseru hoteru), also known in the Western world as a pod hotel, is a type of hotel developed in Japan that features many small, bed-sized rooms known as capsules. Capsule hotels provide cheap, basic overnight accommodation for guests who do not require or who cannot afford larger, more expensive rooms offered by more conventional hotels.

The first capsule hotel in the world opened in 1979 and was the Capsule Inn Osaka, located in the Umeda district of Osaka, Japan and designed by Kisho Kurokawa. From there, it spread to other cities within Japan. Since then, the concept has further spread to various other territories, including Belgium, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea.