The Imagined City. Futurism, Utopia and Archigram

Abstract

[EN] Starting from established fundamental principles such as rigidity, stability and durability, both Futurist and Archigram architecture claimed, founded on the economic, social and cultural changes of their time, new housing alternatives based on mobility, flexibility, adaptation and obsolescence. The main aim of this study is to reveal the links established between two conceptions of architecture which, despite having very different formal aspects, share a fundamental common characteristic: they both belong to an imagined, even dreamlike, world rather than a real world, and represent the ideal vision of their particular notion of the city of tomorrow. By contrasting the main manifestos of futurist architecture with the most representative projects imagined by the members of the Archigram group, this article aims to demonstrate to what extent the development of technology and mass culture, on the rise since the second half of the 20th century, would provide the Archigram movement with the necessary tools to give continuity to the futurist ideology using a contemporary, sensationalist and provocative language.