Walking city
The Walking City is constituted by intelligent buildings or robots in a form as being giant, self-contained living pods, which can roam around the cities. The design of the form is derived from a mix of insect and machine and was a literal interpretation of le-Corbusier’s aphorism of a house as a machine where can serve as a living space. The pods will be independent, while parasitic to make the pods to be plugged into way stations to make exchange of occupants or replenish resources.
Walking City has started its idea in the 1960s, which came out from indeterminacy prevalence, particular with the coming idea that the city can be a changing entity which can respond to the immediate needs of inhabitants. As such, it can be determined that Walking City is the result of indeterminacy of place. For Archigram, the concept of Walking City reflect the importance of mobility, and it requires the building to be able to deal with the changing demand of a city. For instance, an office in today’s look can be changed into a museum or kindergarten in the future to meet the changing demand.
From the author’s perspective, the technique of walking city can be reflected as a whole family of the vehicles, equipping with all the elements will be used to function the city, such as the business quarter, offices, housing, as well as the private and public services. Some of the elements also include the detachable auxiliary units, the units such as disaster units and hospitals. Furthermore, it proposes the idea that a standard walking city shall also be equipped with extendible arms, which also one walking city to be connected to other walking elements, with the ground and sea, facilitating the process of transferring of goods and materials.
From some other’s perspective, Walking City can be viewed as a war machine, which has been initially proposed in the International Times in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper had made its own college which imaging that such vehicle can be used to crush houses and tanks and other objects. However, from the author’s perspective, the object cannot be a war machine since it moves slowly across the earth like a giant hovercraft, and the legs of the machine can only be a levelling device when settled on its site. Therefore, the Walking City can hardly be a war machine with such deficiency; rather, it can only be a friendly-looking machine instead.
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