ARCHIGRAM: THE INHERITED CITY AS

INFRASTRUCTURE
LEONARDO TAMARGO

Architect, Vice-president of Temenos: Spanish National Association for Architectural Theory

1. Abstract
This paper deals with the importance of existing cities and architecture at some of the greatest projects by
Archigram, and it is based on the direct analysis of their projects and texts, as much as on the meticulous study of
the main publications on their work. Historically related to utopian and revolutionary positions, this British group of
architects also set up new links between the inherited city and the avant-garde architecture, which had been
artificially divided by Modern orthodoxy. This aspect of their work has not been studied in depth, although it is an
original feature.
Archigram’s members, as well as subsequent authors such as Simon Sadler and Hadas A. Steiner, have
efficiently pointed out the main concerns of the group. Two of them influenced the evolution of their proposals,
from the first utopian and autonomous cities to the last more contextual projects. The first one is the search for a
metropolitan essence; the second one is the revision of functionalism.
Eventually, these two issues were tackled simultaneously at the Instant City, 1968. This project materialized the
spirit of the metropolis and, thanks to the ‘plug-in’ functional notion, complemented the existing city in a symbiotic
manner. The Instant City was not thought as a substitution, but as an ‘updating’. In this proposal, the inherited city
is just an infrastructure to be gently colonized by all kind of architectural components and devices.
Some other projects reproduced the same concept at different levels. The Tuned Suburb, 19 68, and the
Addhox, 1970, were focused on residential areas. They proposed an informal way of transforming the repetitive
housing of suburbs by adding all kind of new spatial units and, thus, they addressed an English traditional principle:
design by addition. It's a..., 1970-71, and Tuning London, 1972, showed how the Instant City procedures could
result in informal, dynamic and adaptable urbanscapes.
In order to implement this update of the city, Archigram used different components: telecommunication
infrastructures, urban audiovisual devices, temporary structures, functional and infrastructural elements connected
to existing buildings, etc.
In summary, this paper reveals how Archigram offered a new way of approaching the existing city. Despite of
their apparent breakdown with the past architecture, they applied all their experimental concepts to the update of
the inherited city, and proposed a large range of solutions for continuity and discontinuity between the new and
the old. In this way, they made the difference among their contemporaries and set an interesting precedent.

2. Background: the content of the metropolis and the ‘assisted function’.

Some of Archigram’s most important projects during the sixties were based on two main issues: the searc h for the
‘essence’ of the contemporary metropolis and the revision of Functionalist principles from an individualist and
technological view. Archigram took part in the utopian and revolutionary movements which started the second half
of the twentieth century, and in a period of ten years, it integrated many of the new tendencies into a unique and
sharp alternative to Modernism.

2.1. The content of the metropolis.

By the end of the fifties, the orthodox Modernism represented by the Athens Charter, 1933, was being heavily
criticized by some young architects who thought its strict and schematic rules were incompatible with complex
urban vitality. Modernist urban planning had been focused on promoting schematic functional zoning as a way to
overcome the spatial, residential and circulatory problems of historic cities, whose intrinsic complexity was seen as
a defect. During CIAM IX, 1953, Alison and Peter Smithson propounded the terms ‘identity’ and ‘association’
illustrated by Nigel Henderson´s pictures of Eas t End area in London, which showed people´s daily activity and
appropriation of public space. This way, they pointed out the prevalence of people and their complex system of

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relations as active urban agents which had been undervalued by the simplistic Modernist model. Smithson´s
presentation called a widespread tendency to consider that –beyond urban or architectural features – only
psychological, sociological and economic conditions could define the metropolitan nature.
The essay The Metropolis and Mental Life (Simmel, 1950) described the influence of the metropolitan life on the
individual and collective psychology of citizens, and propounded that this was the most distinctive feature of the
metropolis. Simmel combined social and economic arguments, but paid l ittle attention to urban planning or
architecture. The Situationist Theory of the Derive (Debord, 1958) followed Simmel’s thesis and showed the
metropolis as a psychological experience: a unique set of stimuli.
At the same time, several American thinkers known as ‘Anti -planners’ –William H. Whyte, Jane Jacobs, etc.–
studied their contemporary cities and stated that features suc h as “heterogeneity, concentration, specialization,
tension, drive” (White, Jacobs et al. 1958 p.10) were intrinsically-metropolitan and desirable conditions. Thus, they
criticised both Modernism –which did not make this conditions possible– and orthodox urban planning –based on
the imposition of simplistic abstract models and therefore unconnected with the complex vital order of real cities.
This context had a great influence on Archigram’s members. Their exhibition Living City, 1963, which was a
starting point for the group, followed these thoughts:
“Architecture is only a small part of city environment in terms of real significance; the total environment is what is
important [...] The object (of the exhibition) was to determine the effect total environment has on the human
condition, the response it generates –and to capture, to express, the vitality of the city. We must perpetuate this
vitality or the city will die at the hands of the hard planners and architect-aesthetes” (Cook, Warren et al. 1972 p.20)
No specific architectural or urban proposal was showed at Living City –only images, drawings and texts were
displayed to recreate the experience and vital order of the city– as it was thought that they could not define the
contemporary metropolis on their own:
“When it is raining in Oxford Street, the architecture is no more important than the rain, in fact the weather has
probably more to do with the pulsation of the living city at a moment in time”(Cook, Warren et al. 1972 p.20)
The exhibition was marked by a series of concepts –survival, crowd, movement, man, place, communications
and situation– which represented different aspects of the metropolis as a vital experience–. Archigram wanted to
comprehend and recreate the metropolitan atmosphere before defining the architecture, that is to say, to design
the city content before the city itself.

2.2. Towards the ‘assisted function’.

By the middle of the twentieth century, Functionalist Modernism was thought to be too rigid and imposing by a set
of young architects. The breakdown was definitively announced by pioneer Yona Friedman. Since the fifties, this
originally Hungarian architect propounded a kind of urban design which was radically opposed to the Modernist.
Against the rigid zoning of the Athens Charter, Friedman defended functional indeterminacy, which implied “the
lowest possible number of strict rules, the lowest precision” as it is the “inhabitant who invents the city” (Friedman,
2006 p.3). This led to the ‘Spatial City’; a continuous three-dimensional grid over the traditional city, supported by
great pillars, which accommodated a number of heterogeneous containers spontaneously designed and build by
their inhabitants. Friedman´s experiments had an evident influence on George Candilis, Alexis Josi c y Shadrach
Woods –all of them Team X members– who reinterpreted his principles at the project for the destroyed medieval
centre of Frankfurt. In contrast to the neutral mega -structure of the Spatial City, their flexible system of platforms
and walkways allowed them to pla n the spatial and functional complexity and diversity that Friedman had left to
the inhabitants´ action. Thanks to this flexibility, the project could get integrated within a historical urban area,
questioning the separation between the historical and the modern city –which was still evident at Friedman’s work.
While Friedman and some members of the Team X criticised Modernist Functionalism by defending its contrary
–functional indeterminacy– others made a revision of the Functionalist principles to releas e them from Modernist
orthodoxy. In Japan, Metabolism got back to the challenge of massive, fast and industrialized construction of
dwellings. In order to make it flexible and easy, they split buildings into minimum functional units with constructive
and formal autonomy. Shelter was supplied by individual and independent capsules, which were connected to a
basic mega-structure for sustenance, circulation and common systems. This way, they could profit all industrial
benefits and, at the same time, promote the visual indeterminacy of the whole, whose shape depended on the
addition or removal of capsules according to the law of supply and demand.
Archigram reinterpreted Metabolism principles at the Plug-in City, 1964. Peter Cook –its author– understood
that the atomization allowed him to express the heterogeneity of the metropolis, as well as the dynamic relations

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between its multiple functional units. The notion ‘plug-in’ meant the direct connexion between each different
element and the common infrastructure, and affected all different functions. If a complement became obsolete, it
was replaced by a new one. As the whole city configuration was constantly changing, it looked almost as vital and
frenetic as the pure metropolitan experience of Living City.
After the Plug-in City, Archigram members went into detail about the design of both the components and the
mega-structure. Between 1964 and 1965, they produced several projects of habitable capsules, such as the Capsule
Homes Project, 1964, the Gasket House, 1965, and the Living Pod, 1965. It is important to note that the mega-
structure lost its significance progressively: in the first project it was the structural and service core of a tower,
in the second it was just a structural framework and, eventually, it disappeared in the last project, in which the
capsule gained total autonomy.

Figure 1. This sequence shows the disolution of the mega-structure from the former Capsule Homes (A), through
the Gasket House (B) and the Living Pod (C); to the subsequent Suitaloon and Cushicle (D). Diagrams based on the
original Archigram’s projects, by the author of this paper.

The dissolution of the mega-structure –studied by Simon Sadler– was just another step towards the fragmentation
of architectural units, as confirmed by their following projects: the Suitaloon, 1966, and the Cushicle, 1966 (Fig.1).
More technological than architectural, these transportable devices, which provided minimal comfort conditions,
expanded the limits of Functionalism. Archigram discovered that architectural function, taken to its minimum
expression, could be assisted by some kind of semi-architectural and technological components.

3. Concept: the metropolitan program and the colonization of existing architecture.

We have stated how Archigram assumed the relevance of the metropolitan experience and how it explored the
limits of Functionalism. Actually, these achievements were the result of certain inherited challenges that the
British group tackled. In the first case, the Living City synthesized the content of the metropolis as an experience,
following the principles of Situationists and Anti-planners, but lacked a strictly architectural purpose. In the second
one, the Plug-in City and the subsequent capsule projects revised the Functionalist tradition, but addressed a
Modernist typical program: dwelling. To reconcile these matters and create an original approach, Archigram had
to translate the metropolitan experience into an equivalent architectural program, which would be solved by the
‘assisted function’.

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3.1. The emergence of a new metropolitan program.
Modernism had been focused on housing as the main architectural issue at the time of post-war reconstruction and
global industrialization. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, the consolidation of the welfare state
and the boom of consumerism transformed the programmatic needs of modern occidental societies. As full
employment and automation emerged, workers gained free time and started to spend it. Anthropologists,
sociologists and psychologists got interested in concepts such as play, leisure or spectacle to tackle this new reality.
Titles Homo Ludens (Huizinga, 1949), Toward a Society of Leisure (Dumazédier, 1968) and Society of the Spectacle
(Debord, 1967) had different points of view but, as a whole, they offered a very clear image of that tendency.
Within architecture, it was Cedric Price who first understood these changes. His well -known project Fun Palace,
1961, was thought as a centre for culture, leisure and spectacle; a new type of building to match new needs. This
project addressed the ideas of the avant-garde theatre producer Joan Littlewood, who sought an original kind of
spectacle based on improvisational performance, interactive audiences and constant transformation, which could
become “a synthesis of London’s public gardens, its music halls, and the life of its neighbourhoods and streets”
(Mathews, 2005 p.75). Price did not design a conventional ‘static’ building, but a vast framework where almost
every activity could take place at any moment. To do so, he provided a kit of parts, a set of a rchitectural elements
that were displayed within and around the main structure when needed.
By the end of the sixties, Archigram members embraced these new ideas –since they noticed their true
metropolitan nature– and developed them by their own means in the Instant City, 1968, a project that gathered
many of their previous experiments and brought a major shift to their later work.

3.2. The Instant City as a concept: the autonomy of the metropolitan program.
The Instant City implied the conceptualisation of a metropolitan program. The project was presented as a
‘travelling metropolis’; a whole pack of components such as “audio-visual display systems, projection television,
trailered units, pneumatic and lightweight structures and enterteinments facilities, exhibits, gantries and electric
lights” ”(Cook, Warren et al. 1972 p. 88) that “supplied all the parts necessary for a metropolitan experience”
”(Steiner, 1972 p.212). All functions taking place within and around the Fun Palace main structure were here
completely dissociated from architecture, simply assisted by mobile semi -architectural and technological
components, just like Archigram had anticipated in its previous projects the Suitaloon, 1966, and the Cushicle,
1966.
The conceptual, material and spati al autonomy of the metropolitan program in relation to the built architecture
brought along with it some surprising consequences. On the one hand, it fulfilled the wish for indeterminacy,
flexibility, dynamism and vitality which was typical of the utopian movements during the sixties. There were no
more imposed frameworks, as everything –location, duration, configuration and extension– just depended on the
particular needs of the scheduled events. On the other hand, it made possible to colonize any environment –a
waste ground, a beach, a neighbourhood, etc– and provide it with a metropolitan condition, as this was thought to
have nothing to do with location, but with program.

3.3. The Instant City into the towns: the inherited city as infrastructure.
Among all the possible environments, also existing towns and cities –full of historic determinants and Modernist
excesses– could be successfully updated:
“In most civilized countries, localities and their local cultures remain slow moving, often undernourished and
sometimes resentful of the more favoured metropolitan regions [...] The Instant City projects reacts to this with the
idea of a `travelling metropolis´, a package that comes to a community, giving it a taste of the metropolitan
dynamic –which is temporarily grafted on to the local centre– and whilst the community is still recovering from the
shock, uses this catalyst as the first stage of a national hook-up. A network of information–education–
entertainment–`play-and-know yourself´ facilities.” (Cook, Warren et al. 1972 p.86)
In summary, any built environment –regardless its urban or architectural conditions – could become a suitable
scene for metropolitan life if provided with certain extra components and devices.
The colonization of the existing cities did not involve the destruction or the substitution of their architecture. On
the contrary, Archigram took advantage of the notions ‘plug-in’ and ‘assisted function’ to update underused or
obsolete buildings by connecting new functional and technological components to them:

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“In the drawing with airship `Rupert, a major shift in Instant City was first articulated: the increasing feeling for
change-by-infiltration. The `city´ is creeping into half-finished buildings, using the local draper´s store, gas
showrooms and kerbside, as well as the more sophisticated setup.” (Cook, Warren et al. 1972 p.96)
In a certain sense, the existing city had a similar role to the former mega -structure –remember Plug-in City–
since the different components were plugged and unplugged to it when and where needed.
The Instant City meant a major shift in the way in which avant-garde architecture dealt with existing cities.
Before this project, nearly all the utopian proposals of the Sixties –by authors such as Yona Friedman, the Team X
members or the Metabolists – had inherited the key Modernist principle of independence from historic cities.
Friedman’s Spatial City simply overflew the old city; Candilis, Josic and Wood’s project for Frankfurt substituted a
destroyed area and the Metabolist projects were focused on new urban developments … Only Cedric Price showed
some interest in the inherited city when he proposed the recycling of underused industrial infrastructures –
Potteries Thinkbelt project, 1964– Although his approach was original and remarkable, it was limited to some
specific situations and was not extended to the city as a whole.
Archigram’s Instant City, however, did not substitute the old city –neither totally nor partially– and it did not
create a superimposed layer; it just colonized it gently, completed its structures and established a symbiotic
relationship. As a result of this, it created a balanced ensemble where the semi -architectural components assisted
and updated the existing city.

4. Final development: colonization modes.

The Instant City project was accompanied and followed by a series of proposals –Tuned Suburb, 1968; Addhox,
1970; It´s a..., 1970; and Tuning London, 1972– which developed its general principles. While the Instant City
offered a kind of master plan on what a metropolitan intervention in an existing town should be like, these other
projects were zooms. They showed how the Instant City procedures could result in vital dynamic urbanscapes and
they represented different urban locations and contexts where these procedures could be implemented.
Eventually, they also displayed a wide range of components to be plugged and unplugged into the inherited
architecture.

4.1. Contexts and general conditions

As stated above, the importance of the progra m and its autonomy from the location were main Instant City
conditions. That meant the project could be settled anywhere and still remain essentially the same. Archigram
proposed several –apparently random– locations: open fields, shores, beaches, deserts, wasted spaces under
transport infrastructures, neighbourhoods, streets and other urban sites. Eventually, they chose some of these
options and tried with smaller projects to test the main Instant City concepts and procedures.

4.1.1. Suburbs:
The same year when the Instant City appeared, Ron Herron proposed the Tuned Suburb. This project was thought
for residential areas but, in contrast to the previous housing proposals, it was not focused on shelter. Instead, it
pursued those other aspects which could give some contemporary-metropolitan taste to any existing dwelling;
either it was Georgian, Edwardian or Modernist. Herron invented then the ‘Popular Packs’: packages of semi -
architectural components –window or gate units, scaffolding, screens, i nflatable roof extensions, etc.– which could
be bought by the residents and attached to their houses in order to assist metropolitan life. Some of the
components, such as the window or gate units, just substituted analogous old parts according to the concept of
replacement introduced by the Plug-in City. Others, such as the scaffolding, served as an in-between support for
lights, screens and other electronic devices. Finally, the inflatable extensions colonized the roofs and offered a
flexible extra space for each house. The function of these extensions was not clearly described, but it is unlikely
that they hosted traditionally residential activities, which could have taken place within the existing houses.
Instead, they might be spaces for free recreation and leisure, ready to pop up at any time and meet the
contemporary need for personal amusement. It is also remarkable that the inhabitants were invited to choose their
components among a wide range of options and install them on their own –or at least with very little assistance– so
the whole project was thought as a flexible, participatory and liberating dynamic.
Peter Cook’s Addhox project, 1970, was based on similar ideas. It consisted of a set of architectural elements
used to extend or transform existing dwellings. Its components –or ‘Add-types’– were carefully described and
different architectural styles were available to meet all customers’ tastes. Some items included were bay boxes,

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deluxe bays, cages, semicircular bays, lean-tos, garden screens, bay vans, van utilities, garden trays, fun tubes,
arcading, pole screens, containers, etc. Some project drawings showed how dwellings could be progressively
colonized by these components which replaced their different parts and finally made the whole suburb
unrecognizable. This was the basis for Cook’s subsequent project Cheek by jowl, 1970, which propounded some
kind of architectural ‘cannibalism’, far away from the former symbiotic and balanced relationship between the new
and the old represented by Herron’s Tuned Suburb.
It is evident that Archigram’s approach towards suburbs shared the Instant City principles of colonization and
updating of the existing architecture. Surprisingly, it also addressed a traditionally English housing design principle:
design by addition. Finally, it offered a new version of the Instant City procedures which allowed every particular
user to lead the process, instead of following a programmed schedule.

4.1.2. Random buildings and public areas:

Herron’s project It´s a..., 1970-71, was based on another interesting principle: if program can be autonomous from
architectural frameworks, then any building can host almost any function. Only people’s action can determine what
a building actually is, according to the following diagram: “people promote activity – activity conditions use –
servicing responds to activity + use – time conditions all – there today gone tomorrow” (Cook, Warren et al. 1972
p.137). As a consequence, the use of a building could not be fixed by a label: “labels condition nothing but your
mind”. To illustrate this, Herron presented several collages in which the presence of plug-in components, light
temporary roofs and structures, urban screens, signs, air conditioning systems and other devices colonizing the
whole environment made it impossible to guess the use of each particular building or area. The presence of these
various elements everywhere had a dual consequence: on the one hand, the whole scene seemed more diverse; on
the other hand, all existing buildings and areas appeared to be equivalent, since they were considered only as parts
of a whole urbanscape suitable for colonization.

Figure 2. This two diagrams show how the relationship between the new architecture (in black) and the inherited
city (in white) changed from the Plug-in City, 1964 (at the top), in which the existing buildings had some residual

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condition; to the It´s a..., 1970 (at the bottom), in which they were the base of the project. Diagrams based on the
original Archigram’s drawings, by the author of this paper.

The later Tuning London, 1972, developed these concepts and presented a set of totally colonized urbanscapes.
The authors’ description, as well as the project itself, summarized Archigram’s intentions towards cities:
“Without question the city must endure. Without question the city as [sic] a significant environment because it is
total theatre and total experience. Without question we must engage with the city with enthusiasm and resource.
Our project seeks to augment the events and the structures, the atmospheres and the manifestations, the incidents
and the monuments.” (Warren and Jowsey, 1972)
Ten London actual locations –such as Piccadilly Circus, South Bank, Clapham Common and others – were chosen
as scenarios to be gently colonized by all kind of components and devices, following the Instant City pattern of
infiltration: “where there is the hint of a new architecture it is shown in certain infiltrationary elements.” (Warren
and Jowsey, 1972) Both the range of components and the range of invaded areas –from random private buildings
to crowded streets and parks – were wider than they had ever been in the previous projects.
In the end, It´s a... and Tuning London showed how Instant City procedures could contribute to lively urban
areas and presented urban spaces as hybrid scenarios where the old and the new, and even the public and the
private were not clearly separated.

4.3. Components and devices: their relationship with existing architecture.

The projects described above used a number of components and devices designed to assist and update the
inherited buildings and spaces. Although these were never listed nor described with accuracy, it is evident that
almost all of them belonged to a few families, according to their nature and their relation to existing architecture.
A first family included all plug-in components, those units attached and fixed to the buildings in order to replace
old elements –such as windows, gates, etc– or to supply new functions –such as bay and lean-to units– A second
family was formed by all kind of light auxiliary structures, from poles to bridges, which filled the gaps between
buildings and hardly touched them. These worked as frameworks for signs, lights, temporary roofs, etc. A third
family included varied electronic devices –such as spotlights, loudspeakers, screens, projectors, neon signs, etc.–
either supported by light structures or just fixed on the facades. A fourth family consisted in tents and tensile
structures, settled in open spaces –such as platforms, squares and parks –hanging from poles or even from the
existing buildings. Finally, a fifth family included all inflatable units settled in the parks, squares or even rooftops
and terraces, which provided temporary enclosed spaces when needed.

5. Conclusion.
Archigram’s legacy is multiple and complex. This paper tackles a tiny part of it in order to explain how the role that
existing cities played at their work changed throughout the years.
At the beginning of the sixties, the group tried to integrate some rising critical views and expressed the
metropolitan aspirations with their former utopian, autonomous proposals. Later, they developed a closer view to
the architectural problems involved and produced some original results: first, they reached the minimum
expression of Functionalism –what we call ‘assisted function’– and second, they presented what might be the
clearest conceptualization of the metropolitan program –the Instant City project–. By expressing the metropolitan
aspirations with minimum means, they could look at the existing cities with new eyes, took advantage of their
already built environments and introduced a few additional components as agents of change. This meant a
revolutionary shift in the attitude of architectural avant-garde towards the inherited cities and represented the
greatest opposition to Modernism until that moment, since it was conceptually the opposite. But, above all, these
Archigram’s principles still influence many refurbishments, extensions or urban designs; and this influence could be
an interesting matter of study in a near future.

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