The typical English suburban avenue could evolve into quite a different environment by the introduction of simple elements of a very wide range. They could be bought over the counter as components, and allow for a high degree of 'do-it-yourself' involvement. The styling is wide open: it can be bolted-in, and 'Gothic', 'Bauhaus', 'Pop-Art' - or off-the-cuff aesthetics are interchangeable.

The development is totally random, ad-hoc, and one option (as with the house second from right [in the suburban sequence]) is to do nothing at all.

The kit suggested ranges from 'building' elements such as room-boxes that can replace a bay window, loose structuring of pylons that can be infilled with anything from canvas tenting to panels, to purely decorative screening that is hung out in the back garden: you can be looking at the Swiss Alps rather than Mrs Jone's washing. The caravan-as-satellite-as-room, the clip-on rooftop garden and a whole host of earlier Archigram ideas are here offered in a simple way.

Peter Cook
Archigram, Edited by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron & Mike Webb, 1972 [reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999].