JAMES LAW:
My name is James Law. I'm a Hong Kong born architect and I studied under Peter Cook, who is one of the members of Archigram. I remember at university feeling very optimistic about the whole profession of architecture, because I saw the work of Archigram. It really unleashed the flexibility and the breadth of creativity that could be interpreted as architecture.
PRESENTER:
As an architect, James sees the world in a very specific way. He told us how Hong Kong is an incredibly sophisticated, modern city of interconnected skyscrapers, underground metros, and even airports floating on islands. And years before all of this became a reality, some people were already envisioning it…
JAMES LAW:
[And] There was a group of architects called Archigram who, in the 1960s, was already thinking about cities as sophisticated and as incredible as Hong Kong. Now, everything that we take for granted today was not built at that time, but Archigram was so brave in their vision. They looked at the city and said that the city could be weaved differently, could be designed differently.
PRESENTER:
One of Archigram’s most important attempts at designing a city differently was ‘Plug-In City’. James tells us more.
JAMES LAW:
Our cities today are still conventionally built from the ground up, but ‘Plug-In City’ very much is anti-gravity. It’s saying that buildings can be built from top down and that in itself is so amazing because in the world of software and hardware, we really see that our cities today are so antiquated because we can't upgrade them easily, we can't interchange them easily. But ‘Plug-In City’ tells us something, which is inherent to our future. The power of flexibility is really at the heart of creating a new sustainable city.
When we see Hong Kong in the context of having understood Archigram we should ask ourselves really creatively what it can be. And by seeing it as a canvas for what it can be, it can immediately become an optimistic place. It becomes a city of opportunities. And that is very much the Archigram spirit.
