plug-in city

proposed in hay days of modernism (and anything but in the architectural movement sense of the word) in 1964 by archigram, this hypermodern futurist project was, in many ways, ahead of its time. plug-in city is literally, to borrow le corbusier’s words, “a machine for living.” i’ve been doing some investigation on this project as part of a set of case studies for the thesis project i’ve been working on. interestingly, the plug-in city proposal is actually devoid of actual “buildings;” rather, the idea is to provide a framework, or a megastructure, that acts as a dwelling unit host. this is an idea we’ve talked about previously in andrew maynard’s corb v2.0, which in many ways is a contemporary redesign of the archigram project. nonetheless, the plug-in city is fascinating in it’s approach to flexible living arrangements. the megastructure, as designed, is intended to house dwelling units. these standardized units literally plug into and out of the the provided framework allowing for an ever evolving transformable piece of flexible architecture.  to further the “machines for living” analogy, people essentially serve as raw materials being “processed” in what is, hopefully, an enjoyable living experience.

one’s mind can’t help but imagine a world in which people actually live in what amounts to true mobile homes. complete dwelling units capable of driving down the road from megastructure to megastructure stopping off over night or for months or years on end and plugging-in, effectively becoming part of the building. this fluid world seems to be approaching more readily than we’d like to admit and it seems, now, 40 years later that archigram may have really been truly ahead of their time.