ARCHIGRAM MIT Sadler Fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page Ii
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MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page i ARCHIGRAM MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page ii Archigram Architects (Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, partners), postcard, c. 1971, advertising Archigram Architects’ relocated office and Adhocs (Addhox) gallery in Covent Garden, London. Archigram Architects first opened in 1970 near the Architectural Association, confirming the ambition of some contributors to Archigram magazine to proceed from provocation to practice. Archigram Architects closed circa 1975. MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page iii ARCHIGRAM ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT ARCHITECTURE SIMON SADLER THE MIT PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS LONDON, ENGLAND MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page iv ©2005 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. mit Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The mit Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, ma 02142. This book was set in Chapparal and Magda Clean by Graphic Composition, Inc., and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sadler, Simon. Archigram : architecture without architecture / Simon Sadler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: A new generation: Archigram’s formation and its context—The living city: Pop urbanism circa 1963— Beyond architecture: Indeterminacy, systems, and the dissolution of buildings—The zoom wave: Archigram’s teaching and reception—Conclusions. isbn 0-262-69322-4 (alk. paper) 1. Archigram (Group)—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Architecture—England—20th century. 3. Avant-garde (Aesthetics)—England—History—20th century. I. Title. na997.a825s23 2005 720´.92´2—dc22 2004065582 MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page v TO MY SON, HENRY MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page vi MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page vii CONTENTS PREFACE viii INTRODUCTION 2 1 A NEW GENERATION: ARCHIGRAM’S FORMATION AND ITS CONTEXT 10 2 THE LIVING CITY: POP URBANISM CIRCA 1963 52 3 BEYOND ARCHITECTURE: INDETERMINACY, SYSTEMS, AND THE DISSOLUTION OF BUILDINGS 90 4 THE ZOOM WAVE: ARCHIGRAM’S TEACHING AND RECEPTION 140 CONCLUSIONS 192 NOTES 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY 226 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 233 INDEX 234 MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page viii PREFACE MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page ix An understanding of neo-avant-garde architecture requires a critical summary of Archi- gram’s achievement, and in 1994 I started research on the problem at the Open University. As good-quality essays and catalogues on Archigram have appeared over the last decade,1 the absence of a full-length monograph has only become more noticeable. Given the rapid recent evolution of scholarly research into architectural neo-avant-gardes, we can likely look forward to further publications on more discrete aspects of Archigram’s work, or which conversely merge this work with other discourses. But for now, a book-length study presents the opportunity, as far as such a thing is possible, for an excursion into the Archigram moment as a whole. This permits it to be seen as cultural, and not just narrowly architectural. Because Archigram was a partisan intervention into practice and publishing, the group’s drawings and texts are just as rewarding when read iconologically—as arguments about style, society, modernity, technology, and the architectural profession in the sixties—as they are when scrutinized for facts of architectural technique or principle, which often melt into the spectral haze of Archigram’s distinctive presentational style. For more than forty years the provocative material recounted in this book has drawn both critique and apologia.Tempting though it is to write in similar veins, pursuant to the requirements of a credible architectural history this book neither scoffs at Archigram’s venture nor presents an“authorized biography”of the group. The latter would have been an exercise in futility even had I wanted to write one, since the careful observation of Archigram reveals subtle distinctions between its members’ purposes (despite attempts by the group and subsequent commentary to present the group as univocal). In addition, this book has to allow views of Archigram from outside observers—laudatory and antag- onistic—to accompany Archigram’s self-perceptions. Given my lack of accountability to the surviving members of the group which created my subject matter—Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, and Michael Webb— MIT Sadler_fm* 12/20/05 10:03 AM Page x it is surely a tribute to their magnanimity that they listened of articles and books around the world. There are any number of to me in symposia, discussed their work with me, authorized opinions and memories of the group to be logged and sifted, and its reproduction in my articles and chapters,2 and acceded de the circumstantial record of the pop, technological, and liber- facto to the publication of this study when Archigram Archives tarian cultures to which Archigram related is practically infinite. released picture permissions (including those for Warren Chalk, Mentors, colleagues, and correspondents inestimably assisted who died in 1987) following complex negotiations in 2003‒2004. with the assignment, though of course they will not necessarily Permission for the reprinting of work by Ron Herron, who died sanction the book’s findings. Special mention must be made of in 1994, was granted me by the Herron Estate. the supervisors of the dissertation from which this book origi- The penalty for independent scholarship is that it cannot nated, Tim Benton and Barry Curtis, and of the further insight be privy to all extant records and artifacts, because the group’s gained from examination by Iain Boyd Whyte and Nicholas various archives are not yet in the public realm. The interests Bullock. Other encounters—with Mary Banham, Hazel Cook, of custodians and researchers should soon be reconciled, how- the late Catherine Cooke, François Dallegret, Paul Davies, Mark ever, pending a joint funding bid between the University of Fisher, Yona Friedman, Simon Herron, Malcolm Higgs, Craig Westminster, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Archigram Hodgetts, Diana Jowsey, the late Roy Landau, Arthur Marwick, Archives, and the Herron Archives which will finally see Archi- Peter Murray, Brian Nicholls, Martin Pawley, Roy Payne, Monica gram’s physical effects catalogued, digitized, and transferred Pidgeon, the late Cedric Price, Mary Quant, Tony Rickaby, from their present confinement “under beds or behind walls.”3 Gordon Sainsbury, Paul Shepheard, Alan Stanton, and Peter It is also likely that additional archival material will be published Taylor—added detail and texture to my work. My hosts while in the near future.4 I remain beholden, in the interim, to Dennis visiting Michael Webb were Diane and Bill Menking. Crompton of the Archigram Archives, and Simon Herron of the I have been privileged to work again with the mit Press and Herron Archives, for answering my steady stream of inquiries, its staff, in particular executive editor Roger Conover, whose retrieving archival material, and preparing it for this book.5 resolve is imprinted upon this book. Matthew Abbate and Derek Meanwhile the quantity of more readily available information George, production editor and designer respectively, saw the pertaining to Archigram remains formidable. Whereas research book to press. for my previous mit Press publication (on situationist urban- Work on this study and its subsequent publication were ism) had to magnify evidence gleaned from libraries, long walks, made possible by generous financial aid from the Open Univer- conversational hints, fringe publications, and museum base- sity, Milton Keynes, 1995‒1998; from the Paul Mellon Centre for ments, reading rooms, and newly accessioned archives (which Studies in British Art, London, 2002; and from the University of yielded the book’s arcane cover image), it is the task of the pres- California, Davis, 2004. ent publication somehow to survey and sample a prodigious Unexpectedly taxing in itself, this project was one strand of bounty. An enormous number of Archigram’s drawings, models, a challenging period in my life, into which Jan Wagstaff entered and documents have become accessible through the big retro- and thankfully stayed. Suffice it to say there are other people, spective exhibitions that began with the Centre Pompidou show some now distant from me or who played their parts perhaps of 1994. Archigram published copiously, including its run of the unwittingly, whom I would acknowledge less notionally if I legendary Archigram magazine, and it was discussed in dozens knew where to start or what to say to them. x PREFACE MIT Sadler_00* 12/20/05 9:50 AM Page 1 ARCHIGRAM MIT Sadler_00* 12/20/05 9:50 AM Page 2 INTRODUCTION MIT Sadler_00* 12/20/05 9:50 AM Page 3 SHOULD ARCHIGRAM BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY? Archigram can be fairly claimed as the preeminent architectural avant-garde of its day. Its ideas and images were invariably extreme, depicting scenes of quite rampant moder- nity. Little more than a compilation of offbeat student projects at first, the gloriously shoe- string Archigram newsletter became the focal point of radical architecture locally and globally, published from London in nine main issues between 1961 and 1970. Archigram’s coterie began as an informal consortium, with its core membership of six men (Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron, and Michael Webb) emerging by the third edition of the magazine in 1963 and assuming the Archigram name as a group label. Three of the members were recent graduates with impressive student careers, and three of them were veterans of the mighty London County Council Archi- tects Department.