Instant City Ibiza 1971
Instant City was a call to imagination and an experiment in community living. Coinciding with the ICSID Congress held in Ibiza in September and October 1971, an ephemeral city was built as a counterpoint on land beside the sea in Cala San Miguel.
A minimal infrastructure was constructed and a group of young architects provided the basic technical knowledge with which visitors from all over the world were able to construct their inflatable living modules and communally design circulation areas and shared spaces. To do this we used 15,000 m2 of PVC of different colors and a million staples, together with the necessary instruments with which to construct the world’s first inflatable city.
From an initial geometry which bound together the different modules via a single system of ventilation and overpressure, a more open and flexible organization was arrived at that permitted the use of different geometries of greater complexity according to the design of their occupants: a triconic pavilion of the tree, an isolated cell, and so on.
Text and photography via OAB Office of Architecture Barcelona https://ferrater.com/project/instant-city/
