![]() They proposed buildings that moved, that shone in the dark, that could be changed at their users’ will.Īrchigram’s fascination with the technology of the moment, mostly from the US, is obvious. Archigram wanted architecture to be as mobile, dynamic and “pulsating”, to use one of their favourite words, as the society they saw around them. It was all interesting.” And so, for example, Webb came up with the “cushicle” and the “suitaloon”, fusions of shelter, vehicle and clothing, which would allow their wearers to travel around in comfortable personalised environments. ![]() Someone might be talking about powder puffs, or cranes, or enviro-pills. “The period,” says Cook, “was joyfully acquisitive. He has always been the most loquacious and media-friendly member of the group: “If we were all like Peter it would be unthinkable,” say his quieter friends. Swimming Pool Enclosure for Rod Stewart, 1972 by Ron Herron Photograph: © ArchigramĬook does most of the talking, even when questions are directed at others. There will also be events to go with the publication. The occasion of this gathering is Archigram: The Book, a 300-page compendium of the magazines and related works, assembled and edited by Crompton. Another, Michael Webb, is now based in New York. ![]() Two, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron, died too young. Three of Archigram’s key figures – Cook, Greene and Dennis Crompton – are sitting with me in Crompton’s house in north London. “Form follows function,” wrote another Archigrammer, David Greene, repeating a modernist slogan in order to knock it down, “no it doesn’t it follows idea, it follows a desire for architecture to be cheerful.” Like pop artists at around the same time, they wanted their art form to draw energy from the explosions of technology and consumer culture that were happening all around them. Similarly with Archigram, whose vivid collages gave form and voice to a generation impatient with the dry prescriptions of mainstream modernists. ![]() They proposed buildings that moved, that shone in the dark, that could be changed at their users’ willĪrchitecture proceeds by drawing and writing as well as building – Piranesi’s engravings of imaginary prisons and actual ruins, for example, or the visions of future cities conceived by Antonio Sant’Elia, before he was killed in 1916 in the first world war, aged 28. They, people and publication together, would be some of the most influential of the second half of the 20th century. It gave its name to the group of young architects who made it, a loose bunch whose interests ranged from the everyday to the extraterrestrial, who sometimes collaborated and sometimes didn’t, but the magazine gave them a common identity. Now, it will be literally worth its (small) weight in gold, or more, for this flimsy tablet of stone, this home-made harbinger of a technological future, is rare and collectible. ![]()
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