But all this New Urbanist-old-school revivalism overlooks some defining elements of the crabgrass frontier. Specifically it ignores the work of several anthropologists, sociologists and architects in the post-war era who took note that a new society was forming on the urban periphery – one that potentially could breed new architectural forms and social relations. It was a lonely crowd of migrants – commuters who moved from corporate downtown office towers to modest suburban estates in a daily dance between conformity and individuality. Could new forms of urban design arise from such a unique situation? If anything this intricate socio-spatial dance played out by the post-war middle class was fertile ground for architectural speculation. Radical Itinerant Architectures of the 1960s Concurrent to these sociological and geographical observations but seemingly worlds away (in Europe that is) was a flurry of radical architectural speculation concerning itinerant and de-centralised systems. Although the connection is rarely made, groups like Archigram, Superstudio, Archizoom and Cedric Price were responding to sub-urbanism in their own special way – through cryptic manifestos, irony- and-metaphor-laden collages and almost-serious architectural proposals. Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt is a good example of a decentralised architecture of uncertainty, responding in this case to the post-industrial ceramics region of North Staffordshire. With the project, Price strategised
how to make an educational institution work in a peripheral environment, employing the local rail network with mobile classrooms, laboratories and residences, which could respond to uncertainty and programmatic variability. Archigram put forth a model for a moving city appropriately titled Walking City designed for a decentralised post-apocalypse. Archizoom’s No-Stop City was a vision for an endless de-centralised city. Superstudio’s Continuous Monument was a similar proposal for a never-ending structure. What all of these projects have in common is their rejection of traditional urban centre, and their exploration of what life could be like on the edge of a centre-less place. Flash-forward to today, and it seems like much of the excitement for migratory systems, itinerant architecture and a future suburbia has been lost. Suburban values of cheapness, temporariness and movement have not been taken up in serious urban design proposals. Instead we get heavy-handed gestures of permanence, ersatz downtowns and nostalgic references as the preferred proposal for the future of suburban life. So when Department of Unusual Certainties sat down to put forth a concept for the Build a Better Burb competition, a central goal was to build on the frontier spirit of the places we were being asked to redesign. Was there a way of improving the system, without sacrificing core suburban values of individuality, cheapness, temporariness, and movement?
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