Casas como células. La metáfora biológica y los nuevos hábitats plásticos, 1955-73 / Houses as cells. The biological metaphor and the Plastic new habitats, 1955-73

In the manifestos of “dreaming” architects, synthetic materials gave a new formal connotation to house, at least until the energy crisis of the early 1970s. Starting from the prototypes by Ionel Schein, such plastic cells could later be hooked, as had been envisioned in cluster cities, to vertical structures or set side by side until they formed complex housing units. The circulation of ideas and images produced, between the early 1960s and 1970s, a number of comparable hypotheses similar in purpose and building technique. But were they intriguing opportunity or naïve vision? The paper intends to reflect on how the biological metaphor was used to widen the field of experimentation, sometimes based on debatable theories, including that of plastic as a suitable material for the new visions of the habitat of the future.