still about ARCHIGRAM

The phenomenon that is Archigram (from ARCHItecture and teleGRAM) changed the world of architecture in the sixties and seventies and has influenced many world class, and less famous, architects - and architecture generally - ever since. Indeed the group's ideas have grown even more relevant as time passes. 1991 saw the reissue of the book that they put together in 1972, and the Archigram exhibition has been touring the world since 1994.

Archigram certainly matches that part of the conditions of the Royal Gold Medal Award '… some distinguished person or group whose work has promoted, either directly or indirectly, the advancement of architecture.' And architecture in its wider sense: as Rem Koolhaas wrote recently (in the Introduction to Report on the City 1 and 2) 'there have been no new movements in urbanism since Team X and Archigram.'

Archigram is a British group who are known for their work together over twelve years from the early sixties, and for producing the broadsheet of the same name (though their output continued after that in various ways). Its drawn and written productions looked to be inspired by frontier-work in science and technology, space travel and NASA, Telstar, Cousteau's underwater villages and cities, sea-farming, oil-rigs, new materials and suchlike. But cultural influences were equally important: Pop Art, the Beatles (a significant parallel?), science fiction, American comics and films, Batman, Buckminster Fuller, ARK magazine, the integrated teaching of the Bauhaus, painting and the global village. The heroic concepts of projects like 'Walking', 'Instant', 'Plug-in' and 'Computer' Cities, Sin Centre, Instant Country and Interchange, all became passwords for a certain kind of approach. As did capsule apartments, living pods and skins, The Cushicle, Suitaloon, Gasket Homes and Expandable Place Pads.

The unique strength of the working group that became the fulcrum of Archigram was that it was six people with a range of greatly differing perspectives, tastes, skills, age, politics and backgrounds. Unusually they were from different Schools of Architecture. Three, David Greene, Peter Cook and Mike (inevitably Spider) Webb, were just out of college and produced the first two issues of Archigram. Three, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton and Ron Herron, were experienced with built projects at the LCC (including excellent schools and the South Bank complex), a considerable construction track record, and winning prizes (even if not the first) in national competitions. It was really the combination of two separate but marvellously complementary groupings. As Peter Cook has written, 'it was perhaps its strength that Mike Webb's ability to learn to play Brahms or hum long passages of Wagner, had little to do with Dennis Crompton's understanding of engines, or Warren Chalk's involvement with American painting. The overlap was an enjoyment of teasing: teasing the architectural extremity and most of the architectural language.' A necessary irritant, but, as Spider Webb said, 'being part of society but with antennae".

Archigram, as noted before, was also the name of their famous broadsheet whose title sheet proclaimed that it 'was founded as an occasional journal/manifesto of dynamic ideas for new architecture.' The first issue in May 1961 was priced ninepence. By issue 9, in 1970 it was selling over 5000 copies, in many countries. This showcase-cum-forum to discuss and show the group's fantastic projects was a symbol of friendly defiance to the then current orthodoxy. But, more importantly, it also included the work of many other invited contributions, from students and young architects like John Outram, Steve Osgood, Nick Grimshaw and Ken Martin, to innovative architects and engineers like Helmut Richter, Hans Hollein, Arata lsozaki, Frei Otto, Yona Freidman and Cedric Price. It was Hollein who wrote (in 1964) of the group's concept of 'architecture as a means of communication.' Such communication extended to exhibitions, poems, writing, lecturing and teaching. But communication of the ideas by drawing remained crucial. 'The proof was in the drawing.' And with a thick line so that it would print easily and look good even on cheap newsprint!

The power of the manifesto, especially in its drawn form, to promote concepts and advance their own and others' thinking, was crucial in Archigram's attack on conventional thinking. There are connotations here of the Futurists, the Italian Urbanists, and the Metabolists, of whose work Archigram were aware, as they were of many other architectural influences in the USA, Europe and Japan - notably Buckminster Fuller, Louis Kahn and the Vienna circle. They felt part of a continuous line of discussion from Mies, Gropius, Taut and Corb, through to CIAM and TEAM 10. They were supported in their promotion of all these concepts by Reyner Banham, then of the Architectural Press, Monica Pidgeon of Architectural Design, Cedric Price and Theo Crosby, among others.

What Peter Cook has called 'The Archigram Effect' is that of 'dare' and of watching how other architects are sometimes encouraged to find it possible to innovate, to turn a programme on its side, to fly in the face of local traditions or inhibitions. The effect has been to instil a mood of optimism, so that, however it turns out, a piece of work will not actually worry too much about justification.

Archigram is a marvellously fitting choice for a Royal Gold Medal for the beginning of the 21st century, with the message and mixture of enthusiasm, optimism, debunking, imagination, harnessing awareness of the boundary-breaking realities of the sciences and arts outside, or on the edge of, architecture. While part of history, Archigram's messages can be interpreted for the future. In one sense, Archigram belonged to a new sensibility which sought to re-evaluate architectural practice and to re-define the nature of architecture itself. Surely of great relevance today?

Archigram sits comfortably alongside those other Gold Medal recipients whose influence is based on ideas and theory rather than on built work. They will be the fifth group, as distinct from individuals, in the roll-call of the other 153 Medal recipients - following Powell & Moya (1974), the office of Charles and Ray Eames 1979), Michael and Patti Hopkins (1994) and the City of Barcelona (1999).

I am pleased to have seen my nomination of Archigram accepted (unanimously, I believe) by the Royal Gold Medal Jury, and proud to have had a (very small) involvement in Archigram's beginnings: by helping fund the early Archigram issues and by bringing the group to the notice of Reyner Banham, its greatest supporter.

Citation by David Rock - Past President RIBA 

(source: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk)