a guide to wearing

ARCHIGRAM’SECOLOGIES

by Andrew Buck and Alec PerkinsCover Image: “Archigram” Cover - Peter Cook

How to use this guide

This guidebook should be viewed in conjunction with the Archigram Ecologies Suit. While the suit will illustrate the key Archigram Images and quotes from the members, this guide will be accompanyment with in-depth explanations, lesser known images and analysis.

Suit Key

Each section of the suit

Each Image on the suit will have a number associated that will tie to the image and section in this guide.

ContentsThere are three critical lenses necessary to examine the biologic significance of Archigram’s work: representation/distribution of ideas, apparent parallels, and conceptual or process parallels. We analyzed around a dozen archigram projects and in every instance, we found we could draw a clear parallel to at least one of the aforementioned scales. In fact, more often than not, the parallels between Archigram’s projects and thier biological/ecological counterparts proved to be surprisingly deep and nuanced.

Introduction

Representation: The Living City Exhibition, London, June 1963

Apparent Parallels:Plug-In City, 1962-1966

Plug-In/Capsule, 1964

Walking City, 1964

Walking City/Living Pod, 1965

Conceptual Parallels:

Instant City, 1969

Conclusion

What’s in the Guide

Introduction In the aftermath of WWII, there was a growing awareness of the interconnectedness of geopolitics, cultures, and economies, thus a new view of the world comparable to that of an ecosystem began to develop. The destruction of the war created unprecedented opportunities for the rebuilding of cities, and along with it, a critical rethinking of how people related to these new environments. This was the world in which the members of the British architecture group Archi-gram were educated and coalesced.

One’s first contact with Archigram might well take the form of a poster of Ron Herron’s Walking City, one of the iconic images of that group. In a glance, it is a mechanical fantasy, superstructure, a vision of turrets and technology, unseen mechanics powering telescoping legs that carry it over the land and seas. These first impressions come across as mechanistic and technological to the extreme, and it is easy to simply characterize Archigram as a technology-driven group. However, on a closer look, one realizes that the Walking City was redefining the future relationship between people, cities, and the earth in an ecological and biological framework.

The word “redefining” is interesting here as the

critical element as Archigram and their contemporaries were pushing to develop not only new ways of looking at urban environments, but new ways of doing. With contemporary ad-vances in technology in mind, they proposed well-developed solutions for a new way of living. This life would be separate, different from the pre-war human condition. A life of limitless possibility, unfettered by the static confines of dead buildings.

Their work and ideas were more than a redefinition of the way people interacted; but a re-execution of this definition.

Archigram is commonly misunderstood in this regard. While they frequently borrowed the visual language of technology, they used technological devices to express biological paradigms. As architects reacting to the rapid pace of change in cities and societies, biological, not technologi-cal, models could provide a viable framework for the flux and complexity of contemporary life. Additionally, as a group reacting to the rationalist Modern program which viewed ar-chitecture and urbanism as issues of object and optimization, a biological model is complementary to Archigram’s notion of architecture as process as opposed to product.

We here use the term biological, ecological, and metabolism loosely; in the strictly scientific sense, metabo-lism is the process by which cells power themselves and how they construct macromolecules. (Hultgren, p.54). However, these concepts have understood connotations that concern the cycles of interconnectedness that occur within a complex organism, and as such, are incredibly useful for characterizing the dynamism and complexity of Archigram’s work.

One of the most critical projects in Archigram’s portfolio was actually a representation of their work. The Living City exhibition was the first project undertaken by the entire Archigram group. This exhibition was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and was meant “to express the vitality of city life, rather than suggest a plan for a new city.” (Peter Cook, Archigram p.20)

Living City ExhibitionArchigram, June 1963

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Images

Living City Exhibition Layout of Interior Spaces

Section 1 Section 2 Plan

Photographs of Interior Space 1

Gloop 1 Gloop 2 Gloop 3 Gloop 4

Layout Model Photograph

A

Living City Logo

Purely a representation of ideas, the Living City, was not intended to create a real city; rather it was commentary on the life of the city. A biologicmodel reveals itself through the form of the exhibit, and the ideas of the city as a focus of the body. Represented in the both drawings and mock-ups the exhibit layout mimics the inside of the body through or-gan shaped spaces. This biological translation was not inten-tional as these spaces are based on the form of the triangle, and its “abilitiy to twist itself around spaces.” The resulting organ-like forms illustrate that through an application of the technical, the biological is actually created. At the spatial core of the Living City are “Gloops”, they are areas of the exhibit that consider the separate issues of the Living City and form the “giant brain.” The issues are survival, crowd, cosmopolitan scene, movement, objective, man, communications, place, and situation. Again, like the use of triangles, these forms are not meant to be biologi-cal per se; but through perpetuating the ideas of the Body, flexibility and movement, they inherently become so. For example, the Man Gloop is “organism housing”, an attempt to understand how humans will live and what their needs will be in the future.

Living City ExhibitionArchigram, June 1963

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Section 1

Section 2

Layout Model Photograph

A

A

Although the forms of the exhibit appear biological, the true biologic model of the exhibit, the vitality of the city, is evident in the arrangement of images, spaces and ideas of the Living City. The city is an entity of vitality, with the Body as the center of this vitality. The Body as an element is the critical biological model of Archigram’s Living City, because it is us, the model through which we live. The space of the city is an extension of us and thus becomes a biologic model as a result of vital interconnectedness of the us within the city.

Abbreviated Gloop Image Collage

Living City ExhibitionArchigram, June 1963

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Plug-In CityPeter Cook, 1962-1966 B

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Images

Plug In City Axon - Iconic Plug-In City Image

Plug-In City Drawings

Section 1 Section 2 Correlation Image Coral Reef

Plug-In City, one of the most developed Archigram projects, did not emerge at once as a isolated single project- rather it coalesced and evolved out of several smaller projects that explored various aspects of the concept in greater detail. Throughout 1962-1966, projects, texts, and sketches were created that explored various aspects of the Plug-In City, including studies of plug-in housing, how the cities might grow across the landscape of England, and its potential as urban infill. There are obvious technological references in this project- the name itself suggests units that plug into a larger system in the same way electrical appliances ‘plug-in’ to the electrical system, but a deeper reading shows that the structure, functioning, and growth of Plug-In City are fundamentally closer to biological models rather than

technological ones.

The Plug-in City is inconsistent from drawing to drawing, depending on the aspects under consideration in each project -Peter Cook remarked that there was no “definitive” project- but there emerges a clear set of ideas explored in the Plug-In City. The main ideas explored and developed were expendable architecture, the large scale networked structure, variety as requirement for vitality, and hierarchies of permanence, use, speed, and growth One of the basic elements of Plug-In City was the plug in module, which took the form of store, house, workplace, etc. These were designed with the idea that they could be easily replaced and serviced with cranes depending on the changes of the user’s lifestyle. Warren Chalk was the first of the Archigram group to coin the term “capsule” in 1964 while the group was part of the Taylor Woodrow Design Group (Archigram, p.44). “Throw away architecture” was one of the earliest ideas explored in the Archigram 2 and 3, and Peter Cook explains that after that, “it was then inevitable that we should investigate what happens if the whole urban environment can be programmed and structured for change.” (Archigram, p.28). By building expendable units into larger systems, notions of architectural transience were transformed into architectural ecologies. The throw-away became the metabolic.

Plug-In CityPeter Cook, 1962-1966 B

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Capsule Home , Warren Chalk 1964

Plug-In CityPeter Cook, 1962-1966 B

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In any complex cellular organism, cells live, die, and are replaced by new cells in the metabolic arc of life. Apocryphally, after seven years, the human body has completely replaced all of its cells. Whether this is accurate or not, it does nicely illustrate the idea of the cellular life cycle in the larger organism. In the same way, Plug-In City is made up of units with short lifespans relative to the larger structure. This “metabolism” was a new way of looking at urban design: at its center was a push to redefine the house as separate from the traditional “folk art” of housing that had existed prior to World War II. (Archigram, p.44). Archigram developed a hierarchy of permanence/use/speed. The ‘lifespan’ of each unit was relative to the amount of direct human contact. Bathrooms, living room floors, kitchens, and boutiques were replaced every three years, while more ‘servicing’ components such as car silos and roads were envisioned for 20 years of use. (Archigram, p.39) Similarly, the human cells most exposed to the wear-and-tear of daily life, hair, skin, and fingernails, have the fastest rate of replacement and growth, while the cells that have the least replacement make up the ‘servicing infrastructure’ of the nervous system. This hierarchy allowed the greatest responsiveness of the city to change where the city inhabitant’s tastes and preferences change the most. Peter Cook commented that “The...advantage is that being a self-destroying, self-building system it is easily pushed into the shape people want it to be – rather than its pushing people into shape.” (Peter Cook,

Sunday Times)

Plug-In City, Section 1

Plug-In City, Section 2

Plug-In CityPeter Cook, 1962-1966 B

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“Self-erecting” might also be added to the description, in light of the service cranes and hovercraft. This structure is represented in slightly different ways across the various drawings that comprise Plug-In City, but, as stated before, the concepts remain consistent. In some drawings, such as Peter Cook’s sectional study from 1964, the city superstructure is comprised of a vertical grid rotated 45 degrees. In the Plug-In Office Stacks and Housing for Charring Cross Road project, the units aggregate around vertical spines in inverted cones. In the Archigram periodical, the city takes a variety of combined forms, but still consistent with the stated idea. By appearance, the variations of the form of the city suggest many different biological inspirations. As organized cellular life tends to be organized hierarchically, many systems and organisms tend to express that hierarchy in their physical structure. Upon closer study of the “large scale, network structure,” the coral reef emerges as a clear model, with parallels that go beyond structural similarities.

Plug-In City, Self Constructing Section

Plug-In City, Section

Coral reefs consist of corals, which are small, simple animals, that live together in large communities within a structural framework of their own secreted calcium. (Cloudsly-Thompson, p.75) As the corals die, they leave behind their calcium deposited structures to be inhabited by new polyps or other organisms, and new coral also grow on top, much in same way that Plug-In City builds itself up by means of lifting modules into place. Over extended periods of time, the coral reefs can grow so large that even as the land they grew around subsides or the water level rises, they can form ringing atolls. In fact, the Great Barrier Reef could be seen as megastructure that far surpasses the scale of even the most ambitious Plug-in City span across England. The coral polyps are very much like the Plug-In units in their metabolic relationship with the overall structure. The coral reefs, however, are not just coral- the established calcium structure acts as building surface, defensive shelter, and transportation network for a wide variety of life that live in the reef. This communal use of the hard coral as infrastructure parallels its use in Plug-In City.

Plug-In CityPeter Cook, 1962-1966 B

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Coral Reef

Walking- CityRon Herron, 1964 C

Plug-In City was not the only proposal by the Archigram Group to explore changing paradigms in how cities were formed and how they functioned. In terms of biological models three projects in addition to “Plug-In City” present themselves as prime examples. The first two are linked and generate one, if not the, most visually recognizable of Archigram’s work, Ron Herron’s Walking City and David Greene’s Living Pod. Walking City, like Plug-In, was an idea for a new type of mobile living. The city would move across the landscape gathering resources and connecting to other Walking-Cities via long tubes. The interior would be a full service city, containing housing, industry and commercial enterprises. Once the city was free to move and lifted above the ground, Earth and nature would be able to return to their natural condition. The iconic image of this idea is Ron Herron’s Walking City in New York City. Walking City as biological model is the most visually apparent of any of Archigram’s projects; it proposes a symbiotic relationship with the Earth, using its resources but not negatively affecting the landscape. Additionally, it forces the re-evaluation of the city as organism, the human inhabitants riding and coexisting in its ‘micro-ecology,’ similarly to small animals such as fish or birds living on the back of larger animals.

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Walking Cities in New York - Iconic Walking City Image

Living Pod Model Photographs Plans Section 1 Section 2 Correlation Image Birds on a Rhino

Living PodDavid Greene’s, 1965 C

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Images

Living Pod Model Photographs Plans Section 1 Section 2

A year after Walking-City David Greene developed the idea of the Living Pod. The Living Pod was spin-off of the idea of Walking City, a self contained environment. In this case the scale was the Body. The drawings of this work illustrate an intense focus on detail, development and practical application which is evident in much of Archigram’s work. But, this focus actually creates a moving, functional biological entity similar in concept to the Walking City.

Instant CityRon Herron, 1969 D

The third example of this push towards the fringe is Ron Herron’s 1969 Instant City. During the 1960’s (and in fact, throughout history), large cities and urban centers have defined cultural, social, and entertainment trends making them focal points for visitors and creating a separation of rural and urban life. The cultural power lies in the urban centers, thus weakening the rural town. What if there was a way to create a network of cultural centers, where rural towns became homes of entertainment and social events in addition to the existing urban centers? This is the idea of

Instant City.

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Instant City Collage Collage Collage Collage Collage Process Diagram

Viral Diagram

Instant CityRon Herron, 1969 D

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The Instant City is a mode of inserting culture and vibrant city life into a situation that did not have it previously. Balloons or Air ships controlled by a central entity would bring culture to these unexposed areas; education, images, television and events would create a fairground of city culture. As the balloon leaves, the ideas and culture of the fair continues to infiltrate that town, and actually takes over the town building networks with cultural connections similar to that of London, New York or the West Coast of United States. The Instant City follows the behaviors of a virus: the airship, the viral agent, infects the “sleepy village”. It unpacks its viral payload which then infects the city, hijacking the mechanism of the city to produce event. The virus, the event, and the instant city are phases of the same entity, and the Instant City airship spreads to other sleepy villages, and one could assume, followed (although this is never made explicit) by other event/virus airships made by the village, towards the goal of connecting and transforming the various villages of the country. In this example, it is process and behavior itself that qualify the biological.

Instant City

Instant City

Cook, Peter. Archigram. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY. 1999

Cook, Peter. The City, Seen as a Garden of Ideas The Monacelli Press, Inc., New York, NY. 2003

Steiner, Hadas A. Beyond Archigram: The Structure of Circulation. Routledge Publishing, New York, NY. 2009

Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 1956-1976

Goldhagen, Sarah, Legault, Rejean. Anxious Modernisms

Conclusion References

Through the exploration of various Archigram projects and the nature of the group itself, to consider their work as primarily technologically-inspired fantasy would be a massive oversimplification. Rather, by exposing the ecological and biological models in their works, the solid ground upon which the members of Archigram have claimed to have been standing on the entire time, even as their cities stride, float, and soar over the surface of the earth, is revealed.

Metabolic City, Woofter Fall 2010Bacl Cover Image: “Archigram” Back Cover - Peter Cook