Read Catalog - Charles Simonds

Floating Cities
Charles Simonds's Floating Cities are changing constellations
of social and economic land units transferred to a water site.
Although planned and managed, these maritime communities
have the flexibility of a natural system, with the ability to
divide and multiply their configurations much as an organic,
cellular structure. This work is conceived as a critique of existing
traditional economic notions of property. Simonds views
these futuristic communities as alternative modes of living.
Free to travel the oceans, the inhabitants would develop an
*Plate 2.9. Floating City Model, 1978. Painted wood; dimensions variable.
Collection of the artist. Exhibited in Chicago only.
economy based on their unique relationship to the sea and their
transitory interaction with fixed, land-based communities. The
Floating Cities themselves would alter in time, both reflecting
the defining characteristics of the inhabitants and, conversely,
shaping those very characteristics as the alteration of the site
produced altered states of spatial orientation.
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Simonds's photomontages of the Floating Cities indicate some
of the endless possible arrangements of units.