Glenn Walls

Today’s World

Projects for Total Urbanisation

Architectural models for future housing/new cities

My practice develops, explores and reveals various outcomes and shifts in position, relating to domestic architecture by extending the key ideas of sixties English architectural group Archigram. Archigram believed that English architecture maintained ‘a continuing European tradition of well-mannered, but gutless architecture that had absorbed the label “Modern” but had betrayed most of the philosophies of the earliest ‘Modern’” (Archigram 2007). Archigram ‘refused to be shackled by the past’ (Archigram 2007); rejecting modernism and its minimal approach to architecture preferring to embrace technology and consumer choice that they believed would provide people with a sense of freedom. My practice extends Archigram’s philosophies by producing works, through a DIY aesthetic, that are playful, pop-inspired vision of a technocratic future with no links to past architectural styles. I take my inspiration from consumer goods and organic forms found in the environment. These art pieces note our embracing of technology, which extends my practice to produce works that comment on mass consumption and sustainability.

Similar to Archigram my works are less defined by a set of rules of how a structure should look and function. Rather than create works based on traditional forms of architecture that have removed creativity from our domestic landscape, my works challenge the accepted role that a domestic structure should take and provides scope for further research into the possibilities that organic forms and shapes found within our consumer goods and environment can provide alternative design solutions.

The proposition developed throughout my practice is that even though specific forms of architecture employ various materials and features in construction that seeks to maintain the accepted traditional order of domestic architecture, there is potential for visual art practice to ‘re-territorialise’ this space and existing objects to provided an alternative point of view of how our domestic space should appear and operate.

Archigram 2007, Design Museum, viewed 20 August 2009, http://www.designmuseum.org/design/archigram

Archigram: floating cities

Ron Herron (Archigram): A walking city, 1964

Studio and unfinished works 2010

Development of an architectural model for future housing

Development of an architectural model for future housing