Reading #7: On Radicalism and Archigram's Amazing Technicolor Dream Crusade

I used to think that Radical architecture was kind of ridiculous, which wasn't helped by Mr. Moran's characteristically flamboyant way of lecturing about things. Some of the concepts that were the product of the Radical movement just seem downright ludicrous.  The idea of blimps (named Rupert) depositing things in the middle of the night, in a city which might be composed of giant pods on legs that serve as housing, HOW ABSURD!

Well actually it's not. Even though some of their designs end up looking like sea urchins, it was a pretty good idea to think of the metropolis as an ORGANISM rather than a collection of discrete buildings bound together only by the ground plane. The drawn ideas look kind of like steampunk octopi, but the driving philosophies of the Radicals should still be considered relevant today. Designers should constantly consider the "relationship between urban space and human behavior."

What are some of the typical aspects of urban space? The positives: cultural melting pot, diversity of opportunities and experiences, socialization, public transport (if you think of that as a positive).  The negatives: large income gap, high crime rates, pollution, high living expenses, and sheer population density. Lots of people favor living in the suburbs with a relatively short commute to urban centers so that they can have the best of both worlds - breathing space as well as cultural opportunity. The fact of the matter is that urbanism has an impact on the mindset of the people who live in it, and they tend to become part of this city-dwelling machine that tends to be fast-paced self-preservation from point A to point B avoiding as much traffic as possible.