Read at intervaldesign.org

Archizoom’s No stop city is a proposed dystopian conclusion to consumer-driven architectural development. In No stop city, the box store is the template applied to the entirety of occupiable space, resulting in the endless interior, a space that is so all-encompassing that it defines even the horizon. The project conveyed this notion of uniform regulated space in a series of drawings and installations in the nineteen sixties and seventies that expressed the group’s general discontentment with the homogenizing effects that capitalism was having on the world around them. These drawings included endless architectural column grids that wash over natural landscapes, perverse depictions of consumerist products artificially populating these spaces, and dystopic depictions of the alleged gridded falseness of a system that claims to be natural. What is perhaps most disconcerting is that the group insists that we are living in this world and not even aware of it. This is perhaps the most significant attribute of No-Stop City. Because it never ends, it would be impossible to recognize one was living in it.