The Living City Survival Kit: a portrait of the architect as a young man

Abstract

This article discusses an image published on the occasion of the Living City exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1963. The image, here referred to as Living City Survival Kit, is ascribed to Warren Chalk, and it was produced within the milieu of the Archigram group. In a manner akin to Pop Art, the image represents the modernization of everyday life. Unlike Pop Art, it is about architecture; and unlike traditional architectural images, this image contains no buildings. Instead, the image draws attention to the invisible complement of architecture – how it is used, and how it shapes the experience of the user. The architect, it appears, can no longer impose legitimate order, nor claim genderless, objective distance from the subject of architecture. The image is ultimately concerned with the construction of the architect himself, to the point that it can be read as a self‐portrait.