Warren Chalk started to use the word `capsule’ in 1964. The Archigram Group at that time formed a part of the Taylor Woodrow Design Group, under Theo Crosby, and it was the habit of the company to feed the Group with experimental projects. The notion of a completely new prefabricated dwelling was one of these: the only constraint was that it should stack up into a tower structure.
From every point of view the space capsule was an inspiration: how different in concept and in efficiency from the tradition of buildings! The statement was a capsule dwelling, with the ergonomy and sophistication of a space capsule. The parts would be tailored and able to be updated as technology moved forward, and as the dweller changed his needs. Simultaneously, the Plug-in city was being developed, and whilst both projects remained quite separate it soon became obvious that the capsule dwelling would be a preferred type within a Plug-in city. It also became obvious that the wedge-shaped unit sitting into a tower was a limitation of the concept.
The capsule dwelling was a set of components: whilst snugly and efficiently locked together they were capable of total inter-changeability. To use the automobile as an analogy: the Ford floor tray could be traded in for a Chrysler floor tray. There would be a continual exchange taking place, with constantly changing and evolving parts. Perhaps a dream-machine as well as a mere house? The whole tower would be organised to allow the larger elements to be replaced by crane and the smaller elements manoeuvred from within: as a result all parts could be capable of being opened-out or clipped-in. The main parts were conceived as pressed – metal or GRP, though later the possibility of pressed paper started to interest the Group.
Conceptually, the `capsule’ serves to describe an approach to housing by presenting a series of very sophisticated and highly designed elements locked together within a `box’ which is itself highly tailored. It is an industrial design approach. It implies a deliberate – even a preferred – lifestyle. It suggests that the city might contain a defined conglomeration of such a lifestyle, rather like a hotel. At the same time it is definitive, and would by-pass many of the myths of urban design which depend upon hierarchies of incident and the treatment of housing as folk-art.
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]
