EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1. Brief Description of item(s) The Archigram Archives is an archival collection of material produced by the internationally recognised 1960s architectural group Archigram. It comprises around 18000 drawings and photographic items, 17 models, over 400 video and audio tapes and around 60 boxes of documents and correspondence. The six core members of Archigram are (in alphabetical order) Warren Chalk (1927- 1987), Peter Cook (b. 1936), Dennis Crompton (b.1935), David Greene (b. 1937), Ron Herron (1930-94) and Mike Webb (b. 1937). The items in the archive range in date from 1954 to around 1975, with a small amount of related material from the 1980s and 1990s. The archive is in good condition, despite items having been stored over the years in domestic conditions or in temporary storage. 2. Context Selected Bibliography Peter Cook, Experimental Architecture (London, 1970) Peter Cook, ed. Archigram (London, 1972) Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (MIT Press, 2005) Exhibition history • Archigram: Experimental Architecture, 1961-1974 Opened at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (11 February-1 May 1994) and travelled to Paris, Zurich, Hamburg, Manchester, New York, Ithaca, Pasadena, San Francisco, Seattle, Milan, Brussels, Rotterdam, Winnipeg and Chicago between 1994 and 2003 before closing at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (15 March-8 June 2003). • Archigram (Baltic, Liverpool, 2004) • Archigram (The Design Museum, London, 2004) 3. Waverley criteria The item meets Waverley Criterion Three (Scholarship), being of outstanding significance in relation to architectural history. The Archigram Archives are a unique resource for the study of the Archigram group, one of the most innovative and influential collectives in twentieth-century architecture. DETAILED CASE 1. Detailed description of item(s) if more than in Executive summary, and any comments. What does it depict? The Archigram Archives comprise between 3000 and 4000 drawings, between 11000 and 14000 photographic images, 17 models, 430 video and audio tapes, and approximately 60 boxes of documents, correspondence, financial records and publications, in addition to some other objects, and a quantity of AV equipment, drawing instruments and related material. Around 200 projects are documented, to varying extents, by the Archigram Archives. As one would expect from the group’s diverse practice, these range widely, from sketches for the Nottingham Shopping Centre (Cook and Greene, 1962), to material for the group’s Living City Exhibition of 1963, to drawings for Peter Cook’s Plug-In City (1963-4), and Ron Herron’s Walking Cities project (1964). Amongst later works it includes proposals for world’s-fair pavilions (Malaysia, Montreal, Osaka) and the Instant City (Archigram, 1968). What does it tell us about that period? The Archigram Archives are a window onto the avant-garde of British architectural culture in the 1960s and early 1970s. They therefore document one facet of the wider counterculture in the 1960s that wanted to reconfigure mainstream society. The archives demonstrate how in the field of architecture young designers responded to modernism by moving away from its formal rationales and rules, in favour of developing more innovative, responsive and democratic modes. The archive therefore expresses the recognition of the limits of modernism in the post-war period and records one particular group’s efforts to create alternative approaches. The visionary schemes of Archigram indicate that the 1960s were a period of especially fertile futuristic speculation and exploration. They demonstrate that during that decade there was a desire amongst young architects to replace the status quo, which depended on values such as permanence and monumentality, with a new order that embraced contingency and ephemerality. They embraced popular culture, advertising, mass production and modern materials, as well as engaging enthusiastically with consumer society, even in the way that many of the projects were ultimately about architecture as an expression of personal choice. Archigram’s schemes show that the pressing issues in contemporary society included urbanisation, mechanisation, technology, sustainability and individuality. Who made it/painted it/wrote it? The drawings, models and documents in the Archigram Archives were produced by the six members of the group: Warren Chalk (1927-1987), Peter Cook (b. 1936), Dennis Crompton (b.1935), David Greene (b. 1937), Ron Herron (1930-94) and Mike Webb (b. 1937). In some instances, their friends or employees also helped. The Archigram Archives were assembled by Dennis Crompton over a period from about 1961 to the present day. No. of comparable items by the same artist already in the UK, in both public and private collections? Private collections: Ron Herron archive – size of archive not known. Peter Cook archive – size of archive not known. Public collections: V&A, London: 16 printed panels illustrating a brief history of Archigram and detailing parts of Archigram's entry for the Monte Carlo project (1970) and the Entertainments Building project, London (1969-1972). 2. Detailed explanation of the outstanding significance of the item(s). Significance of figures associated with the item(s): maker/client/owners? The core members of Archigram were (in alphabetical order) Warren Chalk (1927- 1987), Peter Cook (b. 1936), Dennis Crompton (b.1935), David Greene (b. 1937), Ron Herron (1930-94) and Mike Webb (b. 1937). Peter Cook, David Greene and Mike Webb, who had all studied at the Architectural Association, came together in 1960 to produce the first issue of a magazine which they called Archigram (a fusion of ‘Architecture’ and ‘Telegram’). They were joined the following year in the production of the second issue, by Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton and Warren Chalk, who were all working at the London County Council's architects’ department. Influenced by radical thinkers of the mid-twentieth century, such as Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius and Buckminster Fuller, the members of Archigram were provocative in their desire to reconfigure the relationship between society, architecture and technology. Their particular contribution to the critique of modernism was to focus on the urban, the popular, the ephemeral and the idea of need-based architecture. They are recognised as some of the most iconoclastic and inventive architectural thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, whose work had a global impact. Their importance was formally acknowledged in 2002 when Archigram was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects' Royal Gold Medal, despite its usually being reserved for architects who have produced a substantial body of built projects. Although their schemes remained unrealised, Archigram achieved significant impact through their architectural magazine of the same name. Published in nine and a half issues (published 1961 to 1970 then a smaller issue, ‘9 ½ ‘, published in 1974), it was in many ways their major contribution to international architectural developments. Archigram’s visualisations of radical architectural structures were compelling. Having been published in the Archigram journal series, they were then reproduced in international architectural titles. In this way, their influence spread further and Archigram became an important model for other radical, formalist movements, such as the Italian group, Archizoom. Archigram enjoyed a substantial national and international reputation. In 1963 they were invited to stage an exhibition, Living City, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. In 1966 they organised a conference in Folkestone entitled IDEA (International Dialogues on Experimental Architecture), in which many of the new generation of avant-garde architects participated, including Hans Hollein, Claude Parent and Yona Friedman. Further afield, they were invited to exhibit in the 1968 Triennale di Mexico and at Expo ’70 in Osaka. In 1970 their international reputation reached a highpoint when they won the competition for an underground entertainment centre at Monte-Carlo (which remained unexecuted). The period from the early 1960s to the early 1970s was the most vigorous for Archigram. The Archigram exhibition curated by Peter Cook in 1972 in fact broadly marked the end of the group’s collective activities, although they all continued to design and teach. The influence of the group has been substantial, particularly on the ideas and forms of the high-tech movement and by pushing the boundaries of what kind of practice might actually constitute architecture. Both Richard Rogers and Norman Foster have spoken publically about Archigram’s influence on their approach to design, and the Pompidou Centre, Paris, (1971-77) by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano clearly relates in its exposed structure and bright colours to Archigram’s Plug-in City. Archigram’s legacy is also to be found in a younger generation of architects, who were taught over a thirty-year period by individual members of the group at the Architectural Association and the Bartlett, Britain’s two most influential architectural schools. Significance of subject-matter? The 200 projects represented in the archive range widely in their specific subject matter but they are united by being (for the most part) speculative schemes that project a new idea of how architecture and society might interact to shape one another. Modernisation and the city is a recurring theme, for example in the City Interchange Project (1963), the Plug-in City (1964),