“The vision (of the Megacity) was clearly democratic. These cities were propaganda for choice. (The architects) … argued that an architecture based on Mobility and Malleability could set people free”.
US Architecture Critic Michael Sorkin.
The architectural image of transparent footbridges crisscrossing in mid-air between mega-buildings presented by Fritz Lang in his movie, Metropolis, in 1927, was one of the most vivid inspirations of urban architecture of the 20th Century. The sarcastic moral hinted by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times was that, modernity relies on ruthlessly increasing urban efficiency to bring about setting people free from rural poverty.
The idea appears to have arisen mainly from two ends. On the social front, we were led to believe that modern urban life is about proficient transportation of people across city, free and democratic movement across all spaces for all, and integration of work and leisure at all physical and social dimensions. On the technical front, long-span footbridges, large air-conditioned indoor spaces, moldable glass enclosures to roofs and walls, and mega-buildings hollowed in the middle to house circulation spaces, gave birth to footbridges and atrium.
The early vision of the Manhattan Metropolis builders, set back by the war, was nevertheless re-ignited by young British architects in 1960s, known as Archigram, determined to break away from the well manner post-war architecture that “betrayed most of the philosophies of the earliest Modern”, and fully exploit the social agenda and engineering will, to create mega-structures of multi-level spaces where people can meander across mid-air, seamlessly from outdoors to indoors, as seen in “Walking City” by Ron Herron in 1964. The closest it was ever realized was the footbridge system of the South Bank ensemble built in Festival Britain in 1951. The lack of realistic market rationale limited these dreams to short lived modest executions in either pure leisure or institutional projects, like Snowdon Aviary in London Zoo by Cedric Price in 1962 and University of East Anglia by Denys Lasdun in 1960s, which nevertheless delivered an exciting labyrinth of mobility in a multi-level malleable volume.
Booming of the North American Cities in 1970s opened up another opportunity. Ford Foundation in New York by Kevin Roche in 1967 was the first to interweave workable commercial activities with an indoor square, which integrates almost unnoticeably with the adjacent outdoor plaza. In the IDS Centre in Minneapolis in 1973, architect Philip Johnson created this grand air-conditioned atrium, flooded with daylight and dosages decorated with trees and fountains to offer an exterior illusion, where pedestrians enter at high level from adjacent commercial towers across the street, overlooking and crisscross amongst office and retail spaces on various floors, almost fulfilling the dream of the multi-level futuristic metropolis.
Contemporary cities with ever intensified commercial activities, escalating commercial rental price, and growing demand for indoor comfort separated from vehicular traffic, tend to generate ensembles of commercial complexes interwoven with air-conditioned footbridges across roads, and underground railway stations spanning several city blocks.
Recent year efforts to revitalize these glorious infrastructural elements are driven by self-initiatives from developers in Central Business Districts, from Toronto to Tokyo, and to Hong Kong, and supported by progressive minded city administrators. These Modernist masterpieces can only be successfully preserved, sustained, and adapted for the commercial themes and configurations of today, in the hands of innovative architects, who believe, respect, appreciate and promulgate the ideals of Mobility in Modernity.
