The first half of the twentieth century could be characterized by partnerships between architects and industry fostering new materials and mass production to conceive affordable housing. As the century progressed, architects worked with a drastically different modus operandi using industry to develop representations, either utopian or dystopian. In both cases the paper trail is both rich and inspiring. The space race, concern over latent nuclear war, the overwhelming rise of economic emancipation in industrialized countries nourished architects’ speculation on how social and political developments would influence housing and architecture. Bubble houses, the promotion of plastics, Archigrams collage comic book representations or even Lebeus Wood's dystopian visions, drawings and speculative representations became the expression of a generation, a type of guidebook for living in future cities dominated by technology.
These original and creative visions had little to do with pre-World War II modernist architects who, in a way, saw functionalism as a tool for developing a new way forward for architecture. The 1960s, 1970s, and 80s were reactionary years. Architects attempted to shed the abstract purity and whiteness of modernism while endeavoring to reconnect and rebrand architects as city builders. The metabolist movement in Japan that harvested and synchronized industrial developments with representation became ground zero for this type of architectural propaganda.
Future Systems founded by radical Czech architect Jan Kaplický explored this type of speculative architecture. The firm’s system-based architecture integrated highly sophisticated materials with mechanical means to produce what has become known as High Modernism. After stints with offices like Renzo Piano and Norman Foster, Kaplický defined his personal take by designing conceptual schemes that reformed architectural theorems of context and composition by juxtaposing mechanics, aerodynamics with industrial design requirements like ergonomics, prototyping, and mobility. The Peanut Project 124 is a prime example of the combination of machines with the micro living spaces made famous by Japanese prototypes like the Kurokawa’s capsule tower. The speculative nature of Kaplicky's architecture symbolizes at once the canyon that had developed between everyday practice and architectural theory and the conceptual distance that architects had taken from more conventional manufactured architecture and its representation.
Future System's Peanut Project
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