The Walking City was an idea proposed by British architect Ron Herron in 1964. In an article in avant-garde architecture journal Archigram, Ron Herron proposed building massive mobile robotic structures, with their own intelligence, that could freely roam the world, moving to wherever their resources or manufacturing abilities were needed. Various walking cities could interconnect with each other to form larger ‘walking metropolises’ when needed, and then disperse when their concentrated power was no longer necessary. Individual buildings or structures could also be mobile, moving wherever their owner wanted or needs dictated.
“Walking City imagines a future in which borders and boundaries are abandoned in favor of a nomadic lifestyle among groups of people worldwide.”
One day, in the near future, a city like a walking city may be “real”ised as technology improves and advances. This means that technology that we have is influencing the architecture, in a broader sense, the whole world, at a vast amount. And part of the technology may be Culture Technology using new kinds of mediums and modalities especially digital. These technologies are saying that they are creating the world a better place and for this instance, the walking city which is an imagined world seems to be a very nice, flawless and peaceful place with no borders and boundaries. However, would that really be a utopia or a dystopia? That is the question that clicked in my head with this idea of a ‘walking city’.
“A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of ‘Modern’ yet in fact retains those precepts. We have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image which is an insult to functionalism. You can roll out steel – any length. You can blow up a balloon – any size. You can mould plastic – any shape. Blokes that built the Forth Bridge – they didn’t worry.” - David Green in Archigram Magazine