Study for a pneumatic urban environment
Cities that beat like a heart.
Cities that fly like breath.
Sketch by Wolf dPrix
Coop Himmelb(l)au
Quote
“In the beginning was the city. The countercity. Or better: The dreamed city.”
Project info
Like all urban projects of the 1960s, Coop Himmelb(l)au’s cities were merely suspected, simply reality exposed — like New York, because they had not seen it with their own eyes: the “dissected metropolis of the world.”
The vertical city, the subterranean one, the bundled transportation transformers, the mobility of life, technology — all of that is and was real in New York.
The dream that was added was poetry: “The city pulses like a heart; the city flies like breath.” And an expanded sense of life fills these imaginary cities.
Others have confused this poetry of the city with utopia.
Project insights
