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PREfACE xvii
NU 245
lUIS11IATION CR8IfTS 251
Not all [arch itectural] revelations have to be buildings. They could
be a paragraph from Ruskin's Stones of Venice, or Geoffrey Scott's
Architecture of Humanism, or even Asimov's Caves of Steel. But
architects being the visual, graphics-besotted creatures they are,
the revelations are more likely to be engraved plates in the works
of Viollet-Ie-Duc, or the patent application drawing that revealed
the essence of Le Corbusier's Maison Dom-ino, the space-cathedral
sketches of Bruno Taut or the renderings of imaginary skyscrapers
by Hugh Ferris, the Fun Palace drawings of Cedric Price, the colored
collages of Archigram's Peter Cook ... or Ron Herron's Walking City
drawing, a long-legged revelation stalking the surface of the globe,
a truth or illusion in search of a site on which to settle and become
real . . . But then, the work of the architect as he bends over the
paper, pencil in hand, is all illusion. He produces simulacra of reality,
diagrams which, by some form of sympathetic magic, are supposed to
cause real buildings to happen out in the instrumental world. We all
know that it is not sympathetic magic but a vast and frequently
fallible industrial complex that will turn the illusory vision into real
construction but, for architects, the moment of magic, the revelation
of truth, is when the pencil marks the paper, and the process of making
architecture begins.1
INTRODUCTION
0.2
changing cond itions was devated to the primary concern. This agenda
Prtor Coo~. Motamorphosis. 1968.
relied on the emergence of electronically driven technologies within
the popular domain of consumer products and services, with the
obvious t ime lag behind developments in the laboratory. Digital
technology indicated a potential way to overcome the limits of
the prevalent industrial mOde l, and the more commercially viable
it became, the more tenable the promise of compliant structures.
Images of adaptive arch itectures that addressed the element of
duration began to proliferate at the institutiona l fringes and even
generate new forms of representation. Conjectures would range from
0.3
Tht: Arrhigrom magazines .showing systems design and cybernetic plann ing to ephemerals of all kinds,
their rr: lativt dime.nsioT15 and format5. including tensile , auto-destructive and inflatable structures. The role
of architecture shifted f rom its traditional task of designing hardware
(walls, floors, masonry) to that of designing 'software' : programs
to enable diverse situations in a given space.
The fabrication of a visual language to express the agenda
of reflexive architecture at this juncture is at the heart of this study.
In particular, the focus is concentrated on Archigrom, a magazine
dedicated to the representation and dissemination of such environ
ments. In the nine issues of Archigrom that were published at
nmrr
irregular intervals from 1961 to 1970, a representational groundwork
~ .
-l l ~ was prepared for a discipline overwhelmingly dependent on industrial
0.4
COvt(S of magazines.. including Domus,
Morcorre, Cuodemos Summo-Nu~vo Vision,
Doily Expre55. Hogar YArquirecrur and the
W""'end Telegraph. featu ring Archigram.
0.5
CO""(5 for the entire run of Focus (1938-9)
and of the 1948 issu", of Pion, as well as lh.
final special issue of 1951 dedicated
to the ~tival of Britain.
Form
Archigrom fitted the counterculture of the small magazine - the
broadsheet, the somizdot, the zine - a venue considered to be a
seedbed for new ideas and measure of things to come. In Britain,
where there were precarious and unprofitable publications aplenty,
this phase before the radical project became familiar was an easily
recogn ized form . The period of and following World War II was a
notable exception as a severe paper shortage had resu lted in a 1940
of the publication sought to do away with the division between what govemmental ban on any new publications, rendering impromptu
was architecture and what was not - from theoretical propositions to magazines virtually non-existent,3 Once the restrictions were
consumer products. Even the compounded name, with its overtones lifted, however, the numbers of experimental magazines surged. The
of a transmission device, suggested a communications network. This architectural field in particular had experienced a lapse in the domain
attempt to conceive material objects, from cities to housing, in a of ephemeral periodicals dating back to the institutionalization of
world increasingly interpreted through a series of impulses was modernism in the 1930s. In Britain, of the four little architectural
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM THE IMAGE OF CHANGE
magazines that had been started before the war, only two championed the Architectural Association. Another was Murray's previous four
modernist solutions. The pioneer, Focus (1938-9) by students from issue effort, Megascope (1964-6), which he had started together with
9
the Architectural Association, was shut down after only four issues by Dean Sherwin while they were students at Bristol. The 'reigning
the paper restrictions and other austerities. In 1943, Plan was initiated champion of protest mags' was, of course, Archigram, with Amazing
by the consortium of the Architectural Students' Association and Archigram 4: Zoom Issue naming the trend.'o Banham's article was
survived until 1951 by shifting its base of operations from school ~~~
~"!\..~/~
centered on the Archigram case, deploying the two contemporary
to school.4 publications to further exemplify the influence of Archigram
By the 1950s, the dominance of modernism in the professional interests, including geodesics, plug-ins, megastructures, plastics
journals had been established, as the contents of the Architectural and inflatables.
Review well illustrate, and the authors of the early alternative In addition to its role as a document that lays out fundamental
magazines had become the establishment. Student communities, beliefs, the small magazine was itself a literary genre replete with
on the other hand, grew vocal in their criticism of what was now a history pertaining to layout, representational techniques and
old. There were not many opportunities for the publication of student typography, as well as the subversion of written and visual language.
work, though after Theo Crosby became the technical editor for The nexus formed by the exchange of periodicals among groups of
Architectural Design in 1953 that magazine provided an outlet like-minded people, only compounded by the swapping of content,
s
for a certain segment of the younger generation. Over thirty little undermined the traditional dialectic of centrality and periphery
6
magazines debuted from 1955 to 1970 to challenge the status quo. within a profession. The result was a kind of international framework,
0.6
The postwar alternative reviews continued, like those that preceded a conceptual network, which flew in the face of the previous
COli<, of Megoscope 3 (1965).
them, to deviate from what was being taught in the schools and to the third of four issues of the: student generation's desire, particularly marked in Britain, to domesticate
promote a sense of professional crisis. Extremity of statement varied. magazine: edited by ~e:r Murray and modernism to the specificities of locality, whether through social
~an Sherwin while at Bristol.
From its inception in 1956, Polygon, by students from the Regent or geographical regionalism.
Street Polytechnic, was more successful than the Bartlett's Outlet In tone, these magazines resembled the manifestos of the
(1959-62) at establishing itself as radical; Manchester's 244 avant-gardes of the 1910s and 1920s that Banham had struggled
7
(1955-62) was known for its controversial articles. These were all to rehabilitate into the modernist narrative as part of his doctoral
3 student-run magazines and, like the first two issues of Archigram, research conducted under the superviSion of Nikolaus Pevsner.ll 7
were dedicated primarily to student projects. The proliferation of such Banham was particularly interested in the alternative views of
magazines was indeed so remarkable that in 1966 the critic Peter technology that had been offered by strains of modernism and
Reyner Banham (1922-88), a driving force on the alternative London throughout his career would continue to privilege work that took
scene of the fifties and sixties, declared the trend a movement B changing environmental or social conditions as its premise. By
In an article that was key for the promotion of the Archigram identifying practices that took on technologically adaptive structures,
project, 'Zoom Wave Hits Architecture', Banham identified four little particularly those on the London scene with which he was most
magazines at the core of the trend. The oldest, Polygon, was often familiar, and situating them as true extensions of the modernist
evoked as a seminal publication for Archigram, especially as it was project, Banham determined the emphasis of historical discourse.
where Mike Webb would publish his fourth-year studio project while 'The restrictive parameters of most architectural thought today:
attending the polytechnic, initiating a sequence of reproductions and stated a typical declaration in the introduction to Clip-Kit, 'is
commentary that culminated with inclusion in an exhibition at the making the design of our environment an anachronism in an era
Museum of Modem Art in 1960 and the initial Archigram in 1961. of unprecedented technological advance:'2 The building industry
The newest of the lot was Clip-Kit, begun a full decade after Polygon had not yet even caught up with the industrial efficiency.'3 The goal
by Peter Murray together with Geoffrey Smythe when he arrived at of bringing to construction some of the gains already made by
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM THE IMAGE OF CHANGE
a standardized format: the task of questioning the nature of in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All
22
communication. The medium was bound to its contents. As Scott ideas need not be made physical: If architecture was truly to be
Brown described, these magazines made an agenda of reflecting understood as a means of communication, it followed that built form
was only one form of expression. Architectural drawings were not
their ideology in the logic of their production:
necessarily representations of something that wished to become.
Little Magazines are usually one-track -led by one guiding spirit, Moreover, the journal project itself was a form of architectural
trying to make one point, the vehicle of a single school of thought, practice, one in which information about architecture merged,
and usually representing that school at its most iconoclastic. Little self-referentially, with an architecture of information. Archigram
magazines are often scurrilous, irresponsible and subversive of the was the medium through which the group would advertise ways in
existing order. They are written by young men and often emanate which architecture could be subject to an alternate logic of flow,
from the schools ..' hand-made and usually ill-kempt in appearance, rather than representing buildings as foregone conclusions.
but with a cerrain flair. They may attempt to follow in layout and The magazine was a response to the larger crisis regarding
graphics the same sryle that they preach in their content, or the the status of objects that accompanied technological development
sryle of an arr movement sympathetic to their cause. They are badly and preoccupation with flux. At the same time, the Archigram group,
distributed and marketed and difficult to obtain even by direct as the publishers of the magazine became known, was inspired by
approach to their authors. And they are short-lived.' 8 conditions native to postwar Britain, even to London. The local
professionals whom they included in the publication - such as John
A poorly wrapped, often inaccessible commodity was the point of Outram, for example - were most often associated with the particular
23
the exercise. Even as the Archigram acquired an audience and began parochial milieu in which the group traveled. Moreover, attitudes
listing the shops in which future issues could be purchased, as well toward the technological were as regional as materials or landscape
10 as becoming obviously more skilled at the manipulation of printing and were often more influential in producing new forms than 1 1
procedures, the magazine kept its intentionally makeshift appearance. developments in technology itself. The conceptions of the Archigram
group would reflect a popular climate, interpreted through the lens
The small journal, then, was intended as a radical project in itself, Content of the architectural education of late-fifties Britain. From the social
not just a conveyor of innovative schemes. The recasting of the climate of the sixties and the socio-economic mobility with which
professional publication as an informational leaflet reflected a larger the self-consciously provincial Archigram members toyed to the
cultural shift in focus - from production to communication. Thus transformative mindsets of drug culture, this was a time when
Banham's insistence that the Archigram group was in the 'image London famously teemed with the freedoms of a youth-dominated
business' was intentionally laden with meaning.'9 The power of the urban environment While the fifties had been a time dedicated
group was in its graphics, Banham repeatedly reminded his audience, to the restoration of order; the sixties could sustain the chaos of
which combined between them the most drawing talent 'since Wren technological ebullience more than the immediate postwar era .
2o Still the architecture of the Archigram group was fantastical
was in charge of the Royal Works: His statement 'Archigram is short
2 in relation to everyday British life: in accordance with what Vittorio
on theory, long on draftsmanship' became a kind of motto. ' Hence,
more controversial than spacesuits or puffed wheat being architecture Gregotti called the 'myth of the refrigerator', only 50 percent of the
was the treatment of the image of spacesuits and puffed wheat as population owned that symbol of American abundance as late as
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM THE I MAGE OF CHANGE
potential. 25 In addition, the focus of the art world had shifted from
Europe t o the United St ates after the war. This legacy was particularly
significant for the Arch igram group as the Americanization of British
culture increased during the 1960s, along with the greater ease of
travel to experience the place firsthand: four taught in the United
States for various durations, as did Banham. The aging Richard
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), increasingly regarded as an eccentric
in his native milieu, was enthusiastically received on his visits to
London by architectural students who appreciated the insight he
26
provided into t he technology of the new world. Americana of all
kinds held sway, from cowboy boots and jeans to j azz, Marvel Comics,
sci-fi magazines and, of course, advertisements. Images of popular
culture, from those of consumerism t o those of fantasy, were drawn
upon to create a vision of architecture that shared in the life of the
ambient urban cond ition .
The mechanization Such enthusiasm came on the heels of the reassessment of technology
01 change and its cultural effects within the architectural community of the
postwar period. Given the central role that technology had played in
the devastation of t he war, it was perhaps inevitable that the efficacy
of industrial rationalism would come under scrutiny in its aftermath.
Appraisal would come not only from the youthful marg ins, but
also from the est ablished core. Sigfried Giedion, the very historian
instrumental in codifying t he factory aesthet ics of an international
2 modern ism , began to express the view - in a lecture he gave at the 13
Roya l Institute of British Architects (RIBAl in 1946, for ~ample
that prewar modernism had placed too much faith in functionalism
27
and the mach ine. In 1948 Giedion published Mechanization Takes
Commond, written in the United States from 1941-5, in which he
analyzed mechanization as an agent of change, not as an end
28
0.8 in itself. Giedion acknowledged the introspection required by
Eduardo Pa olozzi, 'Dr. Pepper',
architects given the change from interwar conditions :
oollage on paper, 1948.
0.9
modes of feeling . .. The process leading up ro the present roJe
E.-J. M.",y. 1he Myrograph'. device for
of mechanization can nowhere be observed bener than in the recording muscle movtment, registering the:
Unired States, where the new methods of production were firSt rt:CJcrions of a frog's leg to rep~ted electrical
stimulation, 186B.
applied, and where mechanization is inexrricably woven intO
29
the panem of thought and customs
0.10
toward entropy from Heraclitus onwards. Popper, dislocated to N ~ um Gabo, -Construction in Spac e: : Two
London by way of New Zealand, cautioned his battle-weary publ ic Cones', ctll uloid on marble base, C 1928.
that philosophical systems embracing the instability principle also altered 1932- 7. This is th e: ~ rli e:r vtr3ion
32 35 it app~a r td in the Constructivist
promoted war as a legitimate method of social transformation. publication. Cirri. (1937).
The ideology of flux-based progress, Popper feared, posed a real
threat to democracy and the effort to secure a political status quo
that avoided historicist logic and its validation of war. Popper's
sentiments were consistent with the ideology of modernism: 'PURISM
expresses not va riations: wrote Amedee Ozenfant and Le Corbusier
in 1918, 'but what is invariable. The work should not be accidental,
exceptiona l, impressionistic, inorganic, contestory, picturesque,
but on the contrary general, static, expr~sive of what is constant
33
When Crosby got the not-quite-yet Archigram group their Indeed professional expertise was virtually absent f rom Archigram's
first show, Living City (19631 , through his connections at the ICA, engagement with technology.56 The terms 'hardware' and 'software',
the transition from the alternative scene of the fifties that had been for example, rema ined for the most part outside of the popular,
to that of the sixties was outlined. In fact, their first publication as and thus the Archigrom, lexicon until 196B. It is exactly this lack
a group appeared as a contribution to living Arts in the form of an of technological savair faire that liberated their schemes and
exhibition catalogue. This initial collective effort challenged the limits imaginations from practical constraint
traditionally imposed by architects on the parameters of the urban To be sure, there was no clean break, either chronological or
experience and set the tone for what would follow. The display conceptual , between what have been characterized as industrial
prioritized the transient and ephemeral situations that occur within and postindustrial technology. Even in the digital age, the dominant
the city instead of functional or socia l categories. From then on, technologies, from steel to electricity, were rooted in the industries
the six collaborated on the Archigrom publication . Cook and Greene of the nineteenth century. When Crompton recounted the history
had already published the first two issues in 1961 and 1962 as a that led to Archigram 's conception of the reflexive environment,
promotional sheet for student work. With the first joint issue in 1963, he described it as having descended from 'Bell, Baird, Faraday,
57
Archigram was remade into a forum in which to expand the accepted and the rest: Alexander Bel l, the Baird fam ily and Michael Faraday
parameters of architecture. were prime examples of amateur, entrepreneuria l inventors. The
The visions of Archigram fitted into a long-standing British Archigram group's view of itself as carrying on the boffin heritage
tradition of technological utopianism extending from Thomas More fitted the industrial model. At the same time, the agenda of post
on, where visions of what engineering could produce were combined industrial technology perfectly suited the Archigram one.
with the ideals of social progress. Banham reinforced this by The sense of Archigram as a coherent entity has been - as is
emphasizing the Britishness of the Archigram group's minute the case with the Independent Group - mostly due to the post-facto
attention to detail that distinguished them from technological effort of exhibitions and the publications produced to accompany
fantasy.53 In his survey of contemporary Experimental Architecture, 58
them. The first catalogue, with its psychedelic cover by Diana
Cook presented the Archigram group as part of the 'boffin,54 Jowsey, a frequent Archigram associate, accompanied the exhibition
tradition - or that of the amateur inventor: held at the ICA in 1972 during the brief stint in which Peter Cook was
~2 director. Cook's packaging of the not-quite past codified to a great 2:=
A fascinaring shift in recent years ... is the rise of the 'boffin' extent how the Archigram group was to be remembered : as part
designer at the expense of the 'artist' - designer. The boffin works of sixties popular culture, like miniskirts, drugs and space travel ;
methodically, accruing and invenring when necessary, and by as part of the counterculture that saw architecture as a medium
almost myopic devotion he frequently arrives at his objective. of communication ; and as a strategy that forced architects to break
59
He acknowledges only what he wants to as relevant or important. away from the 'establishment fashion of the 1950s: The revival of
Sometimes he may have forgotten the original context of his interest in these issues launched a second retrospective orchestrated
pursuit, but he arrives at his goal nevertheless. His intuitions are by Dennis Crompton that first traveled from the Kunsthalle in Vienna
channeled. To see him as the product of the technological age is to the Pompidou Center, Paris, in 1994. It has since been shown
not enough. In his working method he owes more to the tradition in various formats at institutions of different sizes and profiles
that has run alongside that of architecture, and has at least as worldwide. The retrospectives feature the images from which the
respectable a history. His is the tradition of Invention or, more reproductions for the newsletter were made, among other group
precisely, of the atrirude of mind that solves problems by invenring related objects. 60 What in the magazine were small monotone images
ways out of them.55 are large and brightly colored in the museum as well as in the
catalogues, where the originals occasionally look even more polished
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM THE IMAGE OF CHANGE
Britain with the work of Cedric Price (1934--2003), judged to employ and electricity to all the other services necessary for the responsive
state-of-the-art technology in his work, and Arthur Quarmby, environment, the model of the core was expanded, first to the house,
Britain's foremost champion of the architectural use of plastics and then to the city. The service conduit and its reliance on the infrastruc
inflatables, as well as the work of students and recent graduates. tural network, however, presented an obstacle to a truly mobile program.
The publication built a sense of an international community for a Overcoming the dependence on infrastructural roots is explored in
group of people with whom their images resonated, and may have Chapter 4, which investigates the turn away from rigid materials and
even changed some attitudes, as Peter Blake testified ('Everything, toward the potentials of the inflatable skin in projects that appeared
absolutely everything, suddenly became architecture,).s8 Mostly it in the newsletter from 1966 to 1968. This chapter looks at how the
spread ideas and familiarized them, whether to be accepted or not: desire for greater personal portability through the use of the inflatable
'While other architects may have had similar ideas and methods of skin introduced the element of temporality into the spatial model.
working ... Archigram were a kind of "seismograph", documenting An important aspect of this analysis is the turn through the organic
and processing new developments, then introducing them to a wider metaphors that dominated the discourse of inflatable technology
S9
architectura l scene: The marks left by this seismograph are the away from the environments at the urban scale to the isolation of
fodder of this investigation. individual bodies. Chapter 5 examines the strategies that the group
used from 1968 onwards to combine the segregated units into dynamic,
The focus of this study is on the representation and dissemination Itinerary reflexive, social settings. Through the rare instance of a collaborative
of architectural ideas. First the Archigram agenda will be situated project, Instant City, the chapter looks at the gradual lightening of
within the historical milieu of British modernism and the avant-garde the initial proposition of the megastructure into an urban experience
context of the 1950s from which it emerged . Distinctive to the British free of the infrastructural anchor, to the point where architecture
context, the debate over the accommodation of change in the built moved beyond its hardware metaphors, even that of the conduit
environment took the form of populist resistance to the aesthetic There would be no difference between the architectural domain and
values of modernism. Chapter 2 explores the positioning of change as that of information.
an antidote to the status quo from the very first group collaboration, By way of conclusion, the study reflects on the implications of
the Living City exhibition at the ICA. Comparisons to previous this technologically driven, post-industrial version of landscape as the
28 exhibitions that influenced the milieu in and against which the group diminishing of structural intervention in favor of transient program 27
displayed their ideas will be brought to bear on the structure and continues to play itself out within digital discourse as an idyllic form.
themes of the Living City as they appeared in the gallery space,
but especially as presented in the ICA journal which functioned as The Archlgram legacy It is a commonplace that one of the few British architectural exports
its catalogue. of the twentieth century, the style known as 'High Tech', followed in
The next three chapters concentrate on the Archigrams the footsteps of Archigram. Indeed, a group bus trip was undertaken
themselves and the transposition of the theoretical concerns to to see the completed Pompidou Center (1977), some highlights of
an independent publication with an international audience. Each which were caught on filmJO The arrival in Paris was, inevitably,
chapter traces an idea from its early articulation in the magazine accompanied by disappointment Though they recognized their
to its developed manifestation in the following years. The unifying cartoons in the work, the literal application of diagrammatic color
thread is the visualization of the shift from the model of physical to the overblown external ducts converted what in the drawings was
form to the biological one, from hard to soft, from open to closed . a metaphor of circulation and exchange into a monumentalization
Chapter 3 considers the precedent offered by infrastructure-ready of services. On-camera musings reveal bewilderment at the
service cores for projects that appeared in the early Archigrams from fundamental lack of dynamism on display. While the frame enabled
1963 to 1965. By extending what had already been done for water internal flexibility of program, the core issue of transience, from
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM THE IMAGE OF CHANGE
0. 16
the structural incorporation of time to the exchanges of technology
Richard Rogers and Renzo Plano. Cc:ntrc:
and consumption, were untouched. The consensus was that the Ge orge> Pompidou, rear fa,.
de. 1972-6.
Pompidou Center, despite being filtered through the representational
lens of Archigram, remained a static building. Thus was the Archigram
project converted into trad itional building.
Greene would explain the implications of construing Archigram
imagery as a blueprint for building:
architecture caught between the industrial and the digital eras of preconceptions.
31
30
(bl
(al
Strewn among those were images from without. including a silhouette popular and intellecruallevels , both stimulating and confusing. In
this ever-changing climate, old gbosts may be cast out and replaced
of a crane, a four-door sedan, outlines of tailor's mannequins, and a
by new; it is rigbt that influences should last only as long as they are
strip of film by Richard Smith and Robert Freeman featuring a man in
useful to us, and our architecrure should reflect this. At a general
profile?4 Chalk continued:
level it is becoming increasingly apparent tbat due to historical
GhostS belp reinforce and establish attirudes , build a very personal circumstances the more tang;ble ghosts of the past - those grim,
humourless, static, literary or visual images - will succumb to the
language, a complex labyrinth of ideals, consrraints, tbeories,
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM THE IMAGE OF CHANGE
onslaught of the invisible media; the psychedelic vision; the insight dissemination to develop an informational architecture. The attempt
accompanying a joke; the phantoms of the futute. to get outside of the closed games of language was rooted in the
belief that an architecture of information would result in an indeter
76
Accordingly, the static th ings that linger and preoccupy must be minate system. Playing games of non-design, the cultural condition
allowed to interact with the newer dynamic conditions, and even to of restlessness would become a cityscape and information would
be overtaken by them. The capacity for architecture to adapt to the approach, but never reach, the status of a substance. The gradual
ever-changing climate directly correlated with the capacity for its lightening of the megastructure into an urban experience free of the
language to incorporate the range of ever-changing influences from infrastructural anchor aimed at the point where architecture would
outside. The 'B' side, 'Phantoms', to which the 'Ghosts' will succumb, lose all its hardware metaphors, even that of the conduit. There would
was comprised of no works of architecture as such. Included were the eventually be no difference between the architectural domain and
specters of triangulated geometries, Op Art patterns, a model on a that of information.
leopard print, diagrams of fleeting impulses, and a schema of a rocket The Archigram project was often criticized as techno-centric,
n
with hovering spiky, comic-style speech bubbles. Whether an aerial, apolitica l and lacking in conceptual rigor Sigfried Giedion, among
a telephone cord, a satellite dish or a strip of punched code, all others of his generation, found Archigram's proposals alarming, part
forms of electronics-age cultural production were architecturally of a 'playboy architecture' emerging in the 1960s. 78 There were many
suggestive.75 Architecture as a vehicle of communications dramatically other ways in which the Archigram agenda was found wanting by
increased the reliance of the discipline on the visual domain outside the group's predecessors, Alison and Peter Smithson among them.
of modern graphic strategies. Images of consumer culture were drawn Peter Eisenman found Archigram as guilty of aetheticization as the
79
upon to generate the atmosphere of transience and circulation, or prewar polemic the group set out to critique. Much of the criticism
even equate lifestyle and architecture. Architecture as a web of leveled at the group has been based in a disdain for their social
imagery implied that building was not of the essence after all. position, characterized as libertarian, or even anarchic. But seen
Representation was architecture in itself. otherwise, the appeal of the Archigram imagery was in its effort
As the decade progressed, the visual context would continue to build a mode of communicating that had communication as its
to evolve and Archigram's own imagery of contemporary life, as Chalk subject and that could serve as a tool to disseminate information
32 knew, would have to move on or stagnate. The elimination of hierarchy about an architecture of information. In this terrain, information was 3::::
and signification raised its own challenges for the process of design. a formative substance for the city and its components. Because the
In the midst of the allure of the transient realities, representation, newsletter's contents were not intended as blueprints but as ideas
reduced to its constituent elements, disintegrated. The inconsistencies about structure, the Archigram imagery illuminates a conceptual
and incompleteness of communication placed the structure of shift shared with other creative processes of mid-twentieth-century
representation itself under scrutiny. Under the conditions of constant culture in a manner that no executed project could. That is also why
change, the course of image-making was inevitably marked by loss. this work is interested in the imagery as part of a magazine, the
Nonetheless, the possibilities offered by contemporary culture over entirety of the vehicle by which the ideas infiltrated architectural
shadowed the crisis of meaning that accompanied the increase in culture for better, as well as for worse. This is a study of image-making,
communications. The pursuit of one ghost allowed another to take of creating a picture of what something might look like. In this, the
its place. Med iated through the vocabulary of mass culture, the present work shares most with the retrospective view expressed by
allusiveness of representation intimated the potentials of a milieu the less pervasive and more theoretical reflections of Greene:
where nothing becomes stagnant and images, in and of themselves,
constitute architectural practice. Creating images rather than If when it is raining on Oxford Saeet the buildings ate no more
objects, the Archigram group used a process of representation and important than the rain, why draw the buildings and not the rain?
THE IMAGE OF CHANGE
BEYOND ARCHIGRAM
MurnlY would later become the an ed itor for Architectural Century Britoin: Economic, Sociol and Culturol Change. london :
Well, I can only ask you to concentrate on the question whilst Design. Longman Group Ltd, 1994, p. 247.
enjoying the picture - sorry, the drawing - and perhaps see the 10 Scott-Brown's iilrticle also dedir::ited the most room to 25 For an invtSt'igation of this phenomenon, see John A. Walke:r,
Archigrom. DtSpite its authors' claim of institutional neutrality Cultuml Offensive: Americas Impoct on British Arr Since 7945,
buildings as advertisements, part normative architecrural rendering, (see A~higrom 5, for aample), the A~higram was part of this LDndon : Pluto Pr5S, 1998.
part provocation, and then reconsider the fact that a building is a phenomenon of the architecrura l school~
26 John McHale would re:fer to him this way in his wriungs about
sort of residue, a ghosdy reminder of all the ongoing processes 11 This rtSean:h wou ld be published as Thearyand Design in the Fuller. Even th e RIBA would acknowledge Fuller's signifiC3nce
Nl'lt Machine A~, New York : Praeger, 1960. to the local scene with a Royal Gold Meda!, though not until
economic, technical and social- that make up the environment, ' , 1968. The award was disapproved of by some, among them
substance, a new material with the power to reshape social arrange 13 'IA)t the time of the First World War, when both houses and of the medal re:inforctd an 'unlimited enthusiasm for technology
cars were: built by hand , one could buy two modrn houstS for with little undermnding of its practicollimits' (Malcolm
ment, in which the city becomes a continuous building site in a very the price of one cheap car .. , However although cars have MacEwen, Crisis in Architectu"" London: RIBA, 1974, p.23).
literal sense, in which things and people vibrate and oscillate around long 5ince been mass-produced for a standardized market, 27 This lecture was given at the invitation of the Modem
houses art still largely made by hand. As a rtSult one can now Architectural RtSearch (MARS) group and summarized in the
the globe in an ecstatic consumption of energy, in which the buy twelve cheap cars for th e price of one mod6t house. And
Architects'Journal(17 Octobet 1946),274.
modernist search for the authentic is an anachronism, in which yet the car of today is va~ly superior to its counte:rpart of fihy
years ago in terms of carnfon. performance and economy' 28 This theme wou ld continue to preoccupy Giedion, as can be seen
resdessness is the current cultural condition, This is the landscape in the first Gropius lecturt which Giedion delivered at Harvard
aploitation of synthetic materials. Arthur Quarmby, 1he Mechanization, see Jean-Louis Cohe:n, Scene.s of the: World
A terrain, after Heraclitus, in which information is almost a substance, Design of Structurts in Plastic', A~hitecturol Design 31 to Come, Paris: Fiammarion, 1995, pp. 183-95.
14 Christopher Gotch , 'Architectu 1960', Ark 26 (Summer 1960) , to Anonymous History, Oxford : Oxford Unive:rsity PrtSs, 1948,
landscape of this study, 15 Scott Brown, 'Little Magazines in Architectu~ and Urbanism', 30 Giedion, Mechonization TaktS Command, 2.
p. 225. 31 Mane posited this mechanization, along with the tyranny of the
16 Reyner Banham, 'Zoom Wave Hits Arthitectuft', New Society, 3 clock that ~gulated it as the root of alienation.
March 1966, vol. 7, no. 179, p. 21 . Reprinted in Reyner
32 Popper quotes Heraclitus: 'War is the father and king of all
Editions, 1994, pp. 15-16. 'A Comment from Ptter Rtyner Banham', in Ptter Cook (ed.), state of "emergent'" or -creative evolution-; each of its stages
Architectural Pross in the 1960s', Journal of Design History 20 This comparison is made in a film by Dennis Postle about the
been undertaken by Arthigram panic;pants. nearer to ptrfmion. The genefCIllaw of development is thus one
Robert Hewison, In Anger: British Culturt in the Cold War Neil Steedman, 'Student Magazin~ in British Arct1itectlJrai International Production, Arts Council Film, 1980), in which
historical dtStiny; and ~ry nation that wishes -to emerge into
1945-60, NY: O<ford UP, 1981, pp. 18-19. Schools', Arc:hitecturolAssociotion Quarterly, Summer 1971. the Archigram group travel to Paris with Cedric Price.
~istence~ must assen its individuality or soul by entering the
It moved from Cheshirt to liverpool, then to the AA. and finally 36-40. The Architectural Students' Association had died along 21 Reyner Banham, Archigrom, p. 5. Quoted by Sutherland Lyall Stage of History", that is to say, by fighting the other nations;
to Birmingham. Scott Brown has dtSCfibtd Plan as 'a socially with Plan at tht ~ginnin9 of the decade but was rtSum::cttd as in a review of the Pompidou exhibition ('Bubble Writing on the object of the fi ght is world domination. We can see from
conctmed publication whose main focus was thr: problem of BASA (British Architectural Students' Association) in 1957. the Wall', Building Design, 8 July 1994), it has also been this that Hegel. like Heraclitus, believes that war is the father
housing and ~build ing in Brita in after the wa r. Its student The Architecrs' Journal offered to publish any contributions ~peated by group members in lectures accompanying rtcent and king of all things.. And like He:raclitus, he believes that war
authors wert: a group wh o later ente:red county architecture from them in a special Student Section, the fim appearing on ~trospecti ves. is just' (The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the
and planning offices in london, Sedfordshire, and Hetfordshi, 19 March 1959, .. Some 150 s<ctions have been published over
22 Sol LeWitt 'Sentences on Conceptual Art', Arr longuoge Aftermath', The Open Society and Its Enemies. vo l. 2, p, 37).
and set the stamp for what was ~perjme:ntal. ~cj ting, and the last 12 years at varying f~quency and quality, the majority,
1(1). 11.
socially minded in the postwa r British public housing and as with Pla n, covering architectura l education, school work and
33 'After Cubism', translated by John Goodman, in Carol S. Eliel
schools programs.: Denise Scott Brown, 'Uttle MagazintS in conference reports, but only with ~ference to Britain' (ibid.,
23 Outram had studied at the Regents Street Polytechnic with (ed.), L'esprit NorNtau: Purism in fbri~ 1978-7925, Los Angel",:
Webb and at the ArchitectufCIl Association with Cook, as well Los Angeles County Museum of An in as:socia tion with Harry N.
ofPlanners 34(4), 223. as being a major force in the publication Po lygon. Abrams, 2001, p. 165.
The editors of the major archite:ctural publications had been in 24 For a compilation of statistics in economic bleakness, see Sue
34 'Philip Johnson's Starck Choice', New York Time.s Magazine,
place for some: tim~ Monica Pidge:on was the: original editor of Bowden, 'The New Consumerism; in Paul Johnson (ed), 20th
13 December, 1998.
35 For more on the Independent Group, set David Robbins. set Simon Sadler, Atthigrom: Afr'hirecture Without ArchiteC1u~. Fr3mework of the Information Society', in The Computer Age: A 70 Denis Postle, dirt:ctor, Beoubourg: Four Films by ~nls Fbst/e.
The independent Group: Postwar Brito in & the Aesthetics
of Plonty. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990; Anne Massey,
The Independent Group, Manchester: Manchester University
Cambridge, MA:MIT Pr<55, 2005, pp. 27-32.
48 Cook train~ at the Boumemouth Potyrechnic under Ron Simms
who encouraged his students to go to London and tht AA on
}
57
Twenty- Yeor View, M.L Dertouzos and J. Masts (eds),
Cambridge, MA: MIT P~s, 1980, p. 165).
Dtnnis Crompton, 'The Piped EnVironment', in A Guide to
71
Tattooist International for the Arts Council,1 980.
Greene, Concrming Arrhi9fom, 1-3.
~
Pr<55,1995. scholarships.
Arr::higrom 1961-74. london: Academy Editions; Btrlin : Emst 72 Ayler fim recorded 'Ghosts' on tho album Spiritual Unity (1964).
36 McLuhan overtly recogniztd his debt to Giedian in a letter of 6 Et Sohn, p. 264. 73 Chalk WillS an avid enthusiast of jazz and sought to wend the
49 Webb was part of a bundle of Regtnts Strt:tt students who
April 1961 to Kamala Bhatia, cited in Philip Marchand, Marshall
McLvhon: 1M Medium and the Messtnger; New York: Ticknor
btcame known for producing projtcts that restmbled biological
organs. DtSpite being selected for the MaMA show, Webb's ~
/,
58 The surviving mtmbtl'l do not always agrte on the nanativt
that has been produoed by the retrospectives and .,.talogues 74
analogy af 'jamming' to dtSign.
The image .,.me from the first ;s.ue of the Living Art magazine,
37
and Fields, 1989, p. 78.
Mal'lhall Meluhan. The Mechanical Bride, NY: Vanguard PrtsS.
1951, p. vi .
submissions to his tutOI'l wert continually rtjtcted for tht
purposes of completing his degree.
50 Drtw designtd tht Dover Street prtmise.s of the leA. thus
.'
,
I
Thert is a sense that thost who were mort prOlific about
drawing have rtceived more credit than those who supplied the
driving ideas.. Greene rtctntJy described ArchiglGm as 'not so
captiontd 'A film made by Richard Smith and Robtrt Frteman in
8mm colour (running time 10 minuttS):
75 Tht code was tak:en from the cover of Cambridge Opinion 17,
much a group as a collection of txposed nerves/firecrack.ers ...
38 Hamilton rtcounted the discovery of Mechanization Taro I!Stablishing an inside connection for Crosby theft. See 'Night I.
~ jumping and orusionally rolliding to form even larger bangs' 1959, the thtme of which was 'living with the Sixtits' and
Command, and imagts from The Mechanical Bride and Thoughts on a Fad<d Utopia' in Robbins, Thelnde".ndent Group, (David Grtene, in Dennis Crompton (ed.), Cona:ming Archigrom, which included ~ys that directly fed Archigrom endeavors by
Vision ;n Motion were ~~n borrow~d for Independtnt Group 197-9. london : Ar<hig",m Ar<:hiv<s , 1998, p. 4. Colin Chtrry, Gavin Brown, Reyner Banham, uwrt'nce Alloway,
purpostS (Riohard Hamilton , Collected Words. london : Thames & 51 The Architectural Review was the official volet of me mod~mist 59 ACDmment from Peter Blake, Arohigrom, 1972, p. 7.
John McHale, James Meller and Alan Da ichtl.
Hudson, 1982, p. 12). David Greene a~o recalled the infiuenoe of
agenda. When Banham join~d the ~jtorial board of the Review 76 Others, like Diana Agrest, had this faith CIS well: 'ff the system
60 Many of the original documents have been 'touched up' for the
those boo,,- Peter Cook, however, ciaim<d that Moholy-Nagy in Ocrobtr of 1952, he used that position to give voice to the of architecture and of design, even when we plClY with it is
exhibitions..
was absent from hls schooling (Columb ia Symposium, 13 March, avant-garde SCtne. always dosed within a game of commentari~ of language
61 This is tSpecia lly true of the cata logue produced for the
1998). 52 Richard Hamilton has writttn of the outlet offe",d by Crosbys a metalingual game - it is intertSting to speculate On the
Pompidou show. Two ~parate and quite different cataloguts
39 For an insightfu l aocount of the intellectua l affinities and ventures: 'It was an odd phenomenon of the fifties in london Outcome of a similar -game" of non-design, a game of the built
were published: a CD-sized one for Vienna and a much glOSSier
t:Xchange of ideas between thtlC authors, Stt Rtinhold Martin, that the most adventurous minds were those young arch itects wond . For non-dtsign is a non-language, Clnd by comparison
affair by the Pompidou Center. The Vienna version contains a
The Organizationa l Complex, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2003 , who found an outle1 through Theo Crosby when ht edittd foreword by Toni Sto"" and an an.rword entitled 'ARCHIGRAM : with a language, it is madness since it is outside language,
.\
pp. 15-79. Architecturol Dtsign. He also ptrsuaded severa l pa inters and The Final Avant-Garde of an Ageing Modernism! by Herbert and thus outside society. This non-language, this non-sense
sculptors among the Indeptndtnt Group to gain aCttSs to lachma)ftr. Tht Pompidou catalogue includtS translations of constitu~ an txplosion of the established language in relation
40 John Summerson noted the difftrenct ~een these two figures an audienct through print that was denied to them by the "'. . . Archigram and Banham ttxts into French. and critical essays to a sense alrtady ~blishe.d {by conventions and rt:pressive
in!hr: Cast: for a Th~ory of Modem ArchneC1urt', in which he gallerit's.. Indetd it was as a resuh of Thea Crosby's invitation rules}. It is symbolic of tht built world outside the rule of design
by Frans:ois Barre, Alain Guiheaux, Dominique Rouillard and
pointed out that Moholy-Nagys lecturts at me Bauhaus wert: in that I wrote on Duchamp for the first time in Uppercase, and and their intemal -linguistic games. It permits us finally to
Jean-Claude Garcias.. A thinner catalogue in the same format as
'somr: respr:cts a negation of Vers une Archirecturt' Uournalof another, longer, effort Urbane Image" for Living Am wh ich undersund another logic which informs the signfficanct of
the Vienna catalogue was produced for the reduced version of
the Royollnstitute of British Arrhiteots, June 1957, 308-9). proved a turning point; interest in my work was tStablishe.d building' ('Design versus Non-D~ign', rtprinted in K. Michael
the show. That catalogue was introductd by David Greenr: and
41 He continued, 'Gropius and Wag~r are advoating demountable, among a small group of Lendon cognosctnte solely by this Michael Sorkin, and also contains commentarits by Barry Curtis Hays (td..). Oppositions Reader, NY; Princeton Architectural
movable hous~ for fuwrt' cititS. There art: projects not only publication and it produced an invitation to exhibit that had and William Menking. P....s, 199B, p. 347),
of movable but of moving houses too; sanitariums, for r:xample, I>n rrlusod me for eight )'<3rs' (Hamilton, Col/erud Word~ 7).
62 This dtStription appeared in the unpaginated pamphlet for the 77 See Mary Mclted, 'Architecturt and POlitics in the Rt'agan Era :
turning with the sun . . , Profnsor J.D. Bernal of Cambridge, 53 Reyner Banham, Me9astrucru~: Urban Futu~s of the Rea:nr Intemational Dialogue of Experimental Architecture con~rt:nct From Postmodernism to Dt:constructivism', rt'printed in K. Michael
England, {plans] to construct houses whose walls art produced Aut, London: Thamts f:t Hudson, 1976, p. 84. !he reasons why held in Folkestone in Junr: 1966 and in the Novembtr 1965 issue Hays (<d.), Architecture Theory Since 1968, Cambridge, MA: MIT
36 by compressed air, by rotating air strtams or opaque gases' tht British alone sttmed prone to finick over detailing are of Architectural Dtsign. Press, 1998, pp. 680-702; and JUstus Dahinden, UrbonStructuros
(Uisz16 Moholy-Nagy, Vision In Motion, Chioago: Paul Theobald 37
dive~ and often ptl'lonal, but do seem somewhat connected 63 The projects containtd in the Mhigrom wert rartly collaborative.. for the Fvcure, London: Pall Mall Pross, 1972, p. 70.
& Co., 1947, pp. 256-8). to a national tendency to ute refuge from ideology in pl'3gmatiCS: Most of the projects 'belonged' to various membel'l of the group. 78 Sigfried Gitdion. 'Introduction in the 19605: Hopr::s Clnd Fe.ars',
42 Moholy-Nagy, VISion In Motion, p. 256. Banham maintained that after Prict'S Fun Palact, which had David Greene has spok:en of the tensions within the Archigram in Space. Time and Architecture: A Growth ofo New Tradition,
got as far as satisfying fi~ rtgulations, 'any project which hoped Group o~r the authorship of ideas: Ron Herron drawing Warren
43 le Corbusir:r would even make what he called the 'outrageous 4th odn, Cambridge MA : Harvart1 University Press, 1963.
to be taken seriously had to be detailed down to the window Chalk's ideas. PetOt Cook <Xp....sing David's, etc:. (4 Man:h,
fundamental proposition' that 'architecture is cirCUlation'. 'Think 79 '[Flor the past fifty years, architeots have understood design
romers and the jointing gaskets' (ibid., 9&-7). 1999). Mike Webb moved to America in 1965, and most of
it over: le Corbusitr implored; circulation 'condemns academic as the product of some ovel'limplified form-fallows-function
54 British usage for someone who is technologically innovative
the participants taught in the States for various inteMls
methods and consecrates the principle of "pilotis'" (PreCisions, formula. ~ situation evt:n persisted during the vn~ immediately
throughout the decade.
tr. E. Schreiber Aujame, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p.47). without the idtological tKJrdens of the pro~ional.
64 In addition to living City at the ICA in 1963, for txample, following World War II, when one might have expected it would
44 Adrian Forty, 'Spatial Mechanics" : Scientific Metaphors in 55 Peter Cook, bporimentalArch irecrure, London: Studio Vista, be radically altered. And as late as the end of the 1960s, it was
th<", was a film by SBC productions in 1966, the 'Seyond
Architecture', The Architecture of Science, ~ter Galison and 1970, pp. 11-12. .', Architecture' audio-visual display at the Oxford Museum of still thought that the pOltmics and theoritS of the early Modern
Emily Thompson (eds), Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 213-31. 56 This was 50 despite the fact that me ~ntrality of thcort'tical Modem Art in 1967, and the tld~ling lecturt 'Archigram Optra', Movement could sustain arcnitecture. The major thtsis of this
45 For an extensive discussion, see ~der Anker, 'The Bauhaus knowledge to postindustrial technology was what Daniel Bt:11 which made the rounds in 1975. attitude WillS articulated in what could be called the Engl ish
of Nature', MODERNISM/morkmity 12(2), 229-51 . called its 'axial principle: 'Nineteenth-ctntury inventing was Revisionist Functionalism of Reyner Banham, Cedric Priet, and
65 Banham, 'Mtgastructurt', 89.
trialand-error empiricism: Bell wrote , 'often guided by brilliant Archigram. This neo-functionalist attitude, with its idealization
46 The group has made much of th~e roles.. See. for ~ample, Cook 66 Archigfllm 8, unpaginated.
intuitions.. But the nature of advanetd ttchnology is its intimate of technoJogy. was inVl!5ted with the same ethical positivism
(ed.), Arohigrom, 140-1. 67 Arrhigrom, London: Studio Vista, 1972, p. 6. and atSthttic neutrality of the prewar polemic' (~ter Eisenman,
relation with science, whert the primary intertSt is not the
47 Herron and Chalk: met at the lCe's school division that they product itself but in the divel'le prope:rtit:s of materials together 'Post-Functionalism' (1976}, reprinted in Hays. A~hirectu~
68 AComment from Peter Blake, Arrhigrom, 1972, p. 7.
both joined in 1954. For more on the intergenel'3tional politics with the underlying principles of order that allow for combination, Theory, 237).
69 Toni Stooss, 'Foreword', A Guide roArchigrom 1951-74, London :
that produc:ed the final de.sign for the South Bank Arts Cent"', substitution, or transmutation' (Daniel Bell, 'The Social 80 Grttne., Con~mingAn:hi9rom, pp. 1-2.
Aademy Editions, 1994, p. 13.