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ARCHIGRAMArchitectural

Daniel

MonographCollage+DrawingsWinstead

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Archigram neither published a sterile journal nordid they proclaim a stringent manifesto. They offered a collage-

in all its meanings-a cut-and-paste, drawn tour dhorizon ofurban networking. A kind of magical mystery tour of new urban-

ity-Ira Mazzoni

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In the year 1960 a group of young architects start-ed to gather into a group to criticize projects, write lettersto the newspapers and make competition projects. Thiswas somewhat of an escape from the boring monotony oftheir London architectural ofces. This group was madeup of Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Da-vid Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb. They wereall recently graduating from their different architecturalschools and did not want to let go of the enthusiasm that

was that they found in architecture school. After continu-ally meeting together they came up with the title Archi-gram for themselves. This name referenced telegrams,which they saw as urgent and simple. The newly formedgroup decided to publish a magazine of their own, con-taining their ideas and creations. Since the British publica-tions at the time would not print student work they hadno other choice. Archigram collectively decided that theirwork would respond to space travel, the moon landingsand anything science ction. Their historical inspirationscame from artist-architects who had envisioned exible,organic and even nomadic structures, like BuckminsterFuller, and Bruno Taut. This inuence is obviously in theirwork for Archigram but it also come through in their ear-lier student work while they in school.

4th year work by Mike Webb

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Their rst exhibition that they created took placeat the Institute of Contemporary art in London in 1963. Itwas called Living city, it was the rst project that theyall contributed to. The general idea behind living city wasabout expressing the vitality of life rather than a sugges-tion for a new city plan. They did not see architectureplaying a very major role in the environment of the city,but instead the total environment is what was important.They considered the rain falling on the streets or a car

driving through the city as important as the architecture,and a regard for everything in the city being equally asimportant by being represented in their collages for thisproject. The collages themselves consisted of pictures ofmany different elements of a metropolis, including archi-tecture. They saw the living city as an organism designedto condition the occupant by changing the world aroundthim, making him completely dependant on a machinebrain that would carry the observer to different compart-ments called Gloops. Instead of just drawing whatthese Gloops looked like, they instead made collages thatshowed the purpose of a certain Gloop.

A Living City collage explaining the project

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A collage a of a Gloop

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In 1964 Archigram started looking at mankindsachievements, like space travel and numerous othertechnological achievements and tried to gure out whatthis all meant for the future of architecture. Warren Chalkstated that It is an Enigma that no single architect ordesign can hold a candle to the particular iconography(of the support structures at cape Kennedy where rocketswere blasting off from). It was very important to WarrenChalk that new architecture not only performed in a com-

pletely new way than what we were used to, but that thenew architecture would aesthetically look like it was outof a science ction. This is evident in the collage drawingshe made showed walking cities that looked almost likespaceships. The drawing elements of these collages weretwo-dimensional while photographic elements added alevel of deep space that referenced elements in our worldthat already exist.

Walking Cities

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Detail of Walking Cities

Image collage describing Walking Cities

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Their project Plug-in City was a prototype city proj-ect that contained capsule like housing that could constant-ly be added to an enormous super infrastructure. Theseideas were represented in section, plan and axonometricand detailed the vast inter-workings of this city structure.Through different diagrams they gave detailed descriptionson how the city worked. Paint added a colorful layer tothese drawing to give life to what could be seen as steriledrawings.

An axon of Plug-in City

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Section drawing

Diagram explaining project

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Collage drawing became more detailed than everduring the project Drive-in Housing. These collagesthrough painting, drawing and pasting images onto thediagrams showed how these houses were to work. Imag-es of modern cars, and families were the constant iconog-raphy that they chose to put in this work to get across amessage of a new type of normalcy they hoped to bring.The use of perspective, not just through image pasting;but through drawing became more important to show the

different aspects of their designs.

Perspective Collage

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Image Collage Image Collage

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Control and choice was a major theme in the 60sand 70s and Archigram decided to make a type of archi-tecture that changed and morphed to facilitate the needsof the inhabitant. The architectural drawings for this typeof machine architecture Looked like an advertisementsthat were current in the 60s and 70s. The imagery ofPopular culture was consciously leaking into their repre-sentation.

An idea Collage

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The Instant City project is the manifestationseveral different small ideas and combining them intoone large idea. Instant city is the idea of a traveling me-tropolis that instantly connects cultures though the use oftelevisions and other various technologies. The collagesfor these left the architectural parts more ambiguous andfocused more on the conceptual ideas of the project.These collages are somewhat two-dimensional and haveonly shallow space, while others from the same project

are more perspective like containing deep space. Thecollages and the ideas they contained considered weremore important than the physical architecture that theseimages would inform.

Perspective Collage

Shallow/Deep Space Collage

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Instant City Collage, mostly made up of Images

Instant City Collage

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Conclusion Archigrams designs were never constructed intophysical pieces of architecture. The only architect outof the group to design and construct a notable piece ofarchitecture is Peter Cook. His design for the KunsthausGraz in Graz Austria, it is reminiscent of projects likeThe Walking City and Plug-in City. Despite the lackof built work they were extremely inuential to move-ments like Metabolism that advocated architecture notbe a static element. The Compositions, iconography,

chaos and formal arrangements put forth in Archigramscollage drawings are clearly evident in works from Haus-Rucker-Co, Gunther Domenig, Walter Pichler and CoopHimmelb(l)au to name a few. Though the dynamic natureof the programmatic elements present in Archigrams col-lages are not yet physically present in most of the archi-tecture that exist presently, these ideas will still be inuen-tial to future iterations of architecture still to come.

The Kunsthaus Graz

Haus-Rucker-Co

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Bibliography Sources:

Cook, Peter. Archigram. New York: Praeger, 1973. Print.

Cook, Peter. Archigram. Basel [Switzerland: BirkhuserVerlag, 1991. Print.

Cook, Peter. Experimental Architecture. New York: Uni-verse, 1970. Print.

http://www.archigram.net

Images

Cook, Peter. Archigram. New York: Praeger, 1973. Print.

Cook, Peter. Archigram. Basel [Switzerland: BirkhuserVerlag, 1991. Print.

http://www.archigram.net