With Linear City, Bernhard Hafner introduced a new stage in his research into the spatial city. The urban nucleus of City in Space was inserted in and interconnected with a broader section of the city. This latter was developed along a horizontal north-south axis given over to every manner of traffic: public transport routes (above ground); mass transport networks and sheaths for energy distribution (underground). On either side of this “linear urban structure” there are different infrastructural nuclei designed for the functional factors of social life (office towers, public facilities, housing areas, etc.). The project model illustrates the rigour but also the multiplicity of the typologies imagined by the architect. At the extremities, the residential modules were represented, suspended in space, diagonally tiered and oriented east-west, based on the principles drawn up by the Archegrams. For Hafner, the mega-structure is not a uniform and homogeneous system, but an open structural arrangement, hallmarked by the flexibility of solutions and the renewal of forms.
Aurélien Vernant
