04 Ordering — Learning from Archigram 1966
More and More / Peter Cook
“Our collective mental blockage occurs between the land of the small scale consumer products and the objects which make up our environment. Perhaps it will not be until such things as housing, amenity-place and work place become recognized as consumer products that can be bought off the peg with all that this implies in terms of expendability (foremost), industrialization, up to date ness, consumer choice, and basic product design that we can begin to make an environment that is really part of a developing human culture.”
“Why is there an indefinable resistance to planned obsolescence for a kitchen, which in twelve years will be highly inefficient (by the standards of the day) and in twenty years will be intolerable, yet there are no qualms about four-year obsolescence for cars?
Housing as a consumer product / Warren Chalk
“we must extend the conventional barriers and find people without any formal architectural training, producing concepts showing a marked intuitive grasp of current attitudes related to city images and the rest. In the world of science fiction we dig out prophetic information regarding geodesic nets, penumatic tubes and plastic domes and bubbles.”
“if we turn to the back pages of the popular press we find ads for do it yourself living room extensions, or instant garage kits. Let’s face it, we can no longer turn away from the hard fact that everyone in the community has latent creative instincts and that our role will eventually be to direct these into some tangible and acceptable form. The present gulf between people, between the community and the designer may well be eventually bridged by the DIY interchangeable kit of parts.”
“in a technological society more people will play an active part in determining their own individual environment, in self-determining a way of life. we cannot expect to take this fundamental right out of their hands and go on treating them as cultural and creative morons. We must tackle it from the other end in apositive way. The inherent qualities of mass production for a consumer orientated society are those of repetition and standardization, but parts can be changeable or interchangeable depending on individual needs and preferences, and, given a world market, could also be economically feasible.”
“Despite pop music becoming a vast industry its success depends on its ability to keep up with the pace of its consumer taste.”
“Of course the idea of mass-produced expendable component dwellings is not new. We are all familiar with Le Corbusier’s efforts in collaboration with Prouvé and with Prouvé’s own bits and pieces, with Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion house, the Phelps Dodge Dymaxion bathroom and the Dymaxion deployment unit, Alison and Peter Smithson’s House of the Future at the IDeal Home Exhibition of 1955, Ionel Schein’s prefab hotel units and the Monsanto Plastic House in Disneyland; there has also been work done by the Metabolist Group in Japan and Arthur Quarmby in England”.
“The order of its design criteria are in correct order to consumer requirements. First, a better consumer product, offering something better than, and different from, traditional housing, more closely related to the design of cars and refrigerators, than placing itself in direct competition with tradition”.
ARCHIGRAM_PLUG IN SERIES_PETER COOK + others
ARCHIGRAM_CAPSULE HOMES_WARREN CHALK
JEAN PROUVÉ_Maison des Jours Meilleurs (A HOUSE FOR BETTER DAYS)
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion house
Alison and Peter Smithson’s House of the Future at the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1955
Ionel Schein’s prefab hotel units
Monsanto Plastic House in Disneyland
Arthur Quarmby
METABOLISTS
and.. MARS ONE
They all embody capsule like structures. Plastic of 1960s. Perhaps it’d be more interesting to propose the experience, not the method or the construction. Maybe there shouldn’t be any explanatory drawings like plan and section. Or is it something in between explanatory drawings and UI?
City/Community/Village as clock — made by and for schedule (optimization?) Alternate way of experiencing space is through time? through clock?
