ARCHIGRAM

CONCEPT
 Archigram was a UK-based art and architecture collective
that came to prominence in the 1960s.
 As part of the burgeoning avant garde of the time, they
aimed to explore extreme alternatives to urban design as
a response to what they perceived to be the dullness and
intellectual conservatism of modern architecture.
 Archigram was formed in London in 1961 by young 
architects Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton,
David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb.
 Virtually all of their plans and ideas remained unrealised,
freeing them to explore unorthodox and outlandish ideas
which they often published in their Archigram magazine.

ABOUT ARCHIGRAM
 They were defined less by a specific set of
principles, than by an optimistic spirit that
corresponded to the prevailing mood of the 1960s,
looking to shake off out-dated ideas and
conventions. 
 They were inspired by the technocratic ideas of 
Buckminster Fuller as well as the American Beat
movement and Pop art.

PRINCIPLES AND INSPIRATION

 Plug-In City designedby Peter Cook.
Walking city concept by Ron Herron.
The Instant City .

IDEAS AND CONCEPTS

Between 1960 and 1974 Archigram created over 900 drawings,
among them the plan for the “Plug-in City” by Peter Cook. 
This provocative project suggests a hypothetical fantasy city,
containing modular residential units that “plug in” to a central
infrastructural mega machine.
The Plug-in City is in fact not a city, but a constantly evolving
megastructure that incorporates residences, transportation and
other essential services--all movable by giant cranes.
This eschewed the orthodox assumption that buildings should be
fixed in place, instead proposing a permanent infrastructural 
scaffold capable of supporting crane-mounted modular living 
units that could be moved around or ‘plugged in’ as desired by
the occupants.

PLUG IN CITY CONCEPT

PLUG IN CITY
 Ron Herron’s concept of the Walking City was even more outlandish. He
rejected the notion that a city is a fixed location and instead re-
imagined it as a super-organism, capable of moving on giant legs until
finding a suitable place to settle.
  building massive, artificially intelligent mobile robotic structures that
could freely roam a post-apocalyptic world, moving to wherever the
structures’ resources or manufacturing abilities were needed.
 Various walking cities could interconnect with each other to form
larger ‘walking metropolises’ and then disperse when their
concentrated power was no longer necessary. Individual buildings or
structures could also be mobile, moving wherever their owner wanted
or needs dictated.
 "Walking City imagines a future in which borders and boundaries are
abandoned in favor of a nomadic lifestyle among groups of people
worldwide."

concept of the Walking City 

WALKING CITY
 The Instant City was a concept in which an airship would fly
from place to place providing entertainment and educational
resources for a metropolis. This would temporarily land in small 
communities, enabling them to experience a different kind of 
urban life.

INSTANT CITY