WARREN CHALK
*
PETER COOK
from a poem by David Greene published in the first issue of Archigram magazine in 1961.
DENNIS CROMPTON
DAVID GREENE
RON HERRON
MIKE WEBB
1
THE SAME
“ YOU CAN ROLL OUT STEEL – ANY LENGTH
YOU CAN BLOW UP A BALLOON – ANY SIZE
YOU CAN MOULD PLASTIC – ANY SHAPE
IT’S ALL
BLOKES THAT BUILT THE FORTH BRIDGE
THEY DIDN’T WORRY”. *
This breezy approach to architecture and design typifies
the anything-is-possible spirit of the six young
architects who came together in London in the early
1960s to form Archigram: Warren Chalk, Peter Cook,
Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Mike Webb.
Weary of what Peter Cook described as the “continuing
European tradition of well-mannered but gutless
architecture” and frustrated by the way in which
so-called ‘modern’ architecture seemed to have betrayed
the bravest of modernism’s philosophies, Archigram set
out to stir architecture from its slumbers, inject it
with new vitality and dramatically expand its horizons.
Responding to comic books and the Beatles, STIR ARCHITECTURE FROM IT'S
space travel and moon landings, new technology SLUMBERS, INJECT IT WITH
and science fiction, the group embraced the NEW VITALITY AND DRAMATICALLY
EXPAND ITS HORIZONS
technological advances of the 1960s and early
1970s with unabashed optimism. Archigram drew The determination of Chalk, Cook,
inspiration from determined experimenters in Crompton, Greene, Herron and Webb
the fields of art, architecture and engineering, that architecture should break out
celebrating and expanding the ideas of such of its narrow-minded, self-referential
pioneers as Friedrich Kiesler, Barnes Wallis, confines and look beyond ponderous
Buckminster Fuller and Cedric Price. Urging buildings which “just get in the way”
architects to remember that “when you are has ensured that the noise Archigram
looking for a solution to what you have been made during the 1960s and early
told is an architectural problem – the solution 1970s still reverberates today –
may not be a building”, the group broadcast not just in architectural circles,
its ideas through its own magazine, teaching, but in the wider world of popular
exhibitions, multimedia installations and culture which its members so
countless collages and drawings. enthusiastically embraced.
"
2
MAGAZINE
ARENA multi
media
of Dennis Crompton’s facility with
micro-switches, carousel slide projectors,
dark room apparatus, layers of acetate
and rubber grommets.
1967
For Arena, the expanded version of the Opera shown here, the
soundtrack and the slides were copied directly from originals used
by the group thirty years ago. The video monitors show three
films made during the days of Archigram magazine. The film
about Archigram was made for television in 1966 by Denis Postle.
I Remember Architecture was compiled by David Greene and
Mike Myers from a selection of material produced during the early
1970s. The untitled film featuring the Popular Pak with street scenes
and robots was made by Archigram and shown in its section of the
1967 Milan Triennale exhibition.
Like a vast hub, Warren Chalk and Ron
Herron’s 1963 City Interchange is a
megastructure consisting of a central
node with transportation conduits
"
3
radiating in every direction, above and
1963
tubes operating on the lower levels. The
structure itself serves as an information
transmitter: its towers are communication
and broadcasting beacons as well as
For a brief period in the early 1960s facilities for transport control.
all the members of Archigram were Resembling a vital organ with a network
employed by the special Design Group of arteries, City Interchange expresses
of Taylor Woodrow, the construction Archigram’s belief “in the city as a
company. Taylor Woodrow asked the unique organism,” an idea more thoroughly
group, led by the architect and designer explored in the group’s Living City
Theo Crosby, to enter an internal exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary
competition for a public entertainment Arts, London, in June 1963.
complex built around a concrete
television tower which was to be Living City was the first project to be
the central feature of the forthcoming executed by the whole Archigram group.
Montreal Expo. Its aim was to capture and celebrate
life in existing cities, rather than
Peter Cook’s design was selected for to propose plans for new ones. It was
further development, which included not an exhibition about architecture:
the making of a model by Dennis “Architecture is only a small part of
Crompton. In Cook’s design, the the city environment in terms of real
tower is treated as an enormous significance. The object was to determine
tree onto which temporary the effect total environment has on the
exhibition elements – an human condition, the responses it generates
observatory, restaurant and – and to capture, to express, the
exhibition centre – could be hung. vitality of the city. We must perpetuate
Once the Expo was over these this vitality or the city will die at
elements could be adjusted, replaced the hands of the bad planners and
or removed. The idea of diagonally- architect-aesthetes.”
linked replaceable component parts
anticipated Archigram's later ideas
for a Plug-In City.
" CAPS
4& ULES and t on
he
le
POD ui t a lo
Warren
S S While Ron Herron’s earlier Walking
c
Cha
in 1964 lk developed h City addresses mobile architecture
project. in parallel w is Capsule Hom
i
on a grand scale, Mike Webb’s
T ith e
John Gle wo years after the Plug-In C s
h
1966 Cushicle provides for the
of the e n n h th e U it y
arth an ad completed S astronaut needs of individual wanderers by
s
the firs d with fiv th e first o enabling them to carry a complete
t ey rb
was ins moon landing ears to go bef it environment on their backs.
u
, the Ca
pired by
of livin tha psule ore Conceived as a nomadic unit,
g conta t most advanc Home
The C
iner: th e the Cushicle inflates when needed
e s p a c e d fo r m and is fully serviced, carrying
capsule
. food, water, radio, miniature
The project
explores som projection television and heating
key principl e of Archigra
es: mobilit m’s apparatus. The radio and television
expendabilit y, adaptability, and
y. E are contained inside the helmet
is industrial ach Capsule Home
space-saving ly prefabricated in a and the food and water supply
features and design with fold-away carried in pod attachments.
a
The compon clip-on appliance wall. Webb envisaged that, with the
ents are inte provision of service nodes and
and can be re rchangeable
or as the inh placed when outdated additional apparatus, the
abitant’s nee autonomous Cushicle could
ds change.
become part of a larger urban
system of personalised enclosures.
The units can be organised in a cluster: In 1967, Webb took the idea a
plugging into one another to create a step further, designing an
larger structure that can be arranged inflatable suit as a complementary
horizontally or vertically to form a component of the Cushicle.
Capsule Homes Tower. The Suitaloon provides a living
envelope whenever and wherever
desired. It fits the body closely
e
variation on th
David Greene’s e Home is the and, when combined with a
idea of a Capsul phisticated Cushicle, provides all necessary
d, a so
1966 Living Po ler home with services. “EACH SUIT HAS A
take on the trai partitions, PLUG SERVING A SIMILAR
and
inflatable seats stations and FUNCTION TO THE KEY TO YOUR
an d ea ting FRONT DOOR,” wrote Webb. “YOU
mobile work hines to maxim
ise
a range of mac conven ie nc e. CAN PLUG INTO YOUR FRIEND
autonomy and nsers and AND YOU WILL BOTH BE IN
ispe
These included ms, climate ONE ENVELOPE, OR YOU CAN
sp os ab le ite PLUG INTO ANY ENVELOPE,
silos for di an d “automatic
l appa ra tu s STEPPING OUT OF YOUR SUIT
contro uipment”.
body-cleaning eq spended WHICH IS LEFT CLIPPED ON TO
can be su
The Living Pod e THE OUTSIDE READY TO STEP
Pl ug -In urban structur INTO WHEN YOU LEAVE. THE
within a an ks
en landscape. Th PLUG ALSO SERVES AS A MEANS
or can sit in op stable legs, the Pod
to its adju a forty
OF CONNECTING ENVELOPES
can be sited on TOGETHER TO FORM LARGER
e or in up to
degree slop ater.
SPACES. VARIOUS MODELS OF
fiv e fe et of w
CUSHICLE ENVELOPE AND SUIT
WOULD OF COURSE BE AVAIL-
ABLE, RANGING FROM SUPER
SPORTS TO FAMILY MODELS.”
“IF IT WASN’T FOR MY
SUITALOON I WOULD HAVE TO
BUY A HOUSE.”
PLUG-IN CITY # PLUG-IN UNIVERSITY #
WALKING CITY #######
Increasingly interested in the idea of expendable Archigram’s interest in
architecture, Archigram began to speculate nomadism took several giant
about new urban environments which could steps further with Ron Herron’s
be programmed and structured to facilitate 1964 Walking City. Herron
change. Plug-in City was a collection of different envisaged whole cities gliding
proposals developed by Warren Chalk, Peter across the landscape, pausing
Cook and Dennis Crompton. It was designed to plug into utilities and
for obsolescence. Even its main ‘frame’ – information networks at
a multilayered network of tubes carrying chosen locations. Walking City
essential services and means of transport – could be seen as a frightening
was intended to last no longer than forty years, expression of what David
while individual housing units, live-work spaces, Greene called the “current
plug-in shops and rentable offices were to be cultural condition of
updated more frequently. Cranes operating from restlessness” or as an eager
a railway at the apex of the structure would anticipation of a mobile world
move different units in and out of position. with a global information
network in which political
The Plug-in University, developed by Peter Cook boundaries and cultural
in 1963 with a group of students analysing differences would melt away.
the future of universities, was a more specific
exploration of the Plug-in concept. Each student
is allocated a standard metal box that can be
located anywhere on the tension skin-covered
decks which form the University’s campus.
The campus thus becomes a nomadic plain with
students moving their boxes from place to place.
"
“No sweat, set the grass cutting height on the
dial and it will sense when the grass is needing