Archigram TEN

Archigram TEN

Archi­gram spec­u­lat­ed on the nature of archi­tec­ture in ways that influ­enced a gen­er­a­tion. In an era defined by the space race, the group’s explo­ration of mov­able struc­tures and mod­u­lar sys­tems stretched far beyond known tech­nolo­gies or con­tem­po­rary real­i­ties. Archi­gram mag­a­zine became the plat­form for explor­ing many of these themes. Launched in 1961, the mag­a­zine ran for 9 ½ issues until 1974, when Archi­gram dis­band­ed. Now, after a 50-year pause for thought, Archi­gram the pub­li­ca­tion is back. Edit­ed by Peter Cook, with con­tri­bu­tions from Archi­gram mem­bers Den­nis Cromp­ton, David Greene and Michael Webb, and with inputs from numer­ous design­ers, tech­nol­o­gists and crit­ics, Archi­gram Ten takes a wry back­ward glance and imag­ines a bold leap for­ward. It looks at where archi­tec­ture is going cur­rent­ly and asks why.

Peter Cook (b. 1936) is a found­ing mem­ber of Archi­gram and the pre-emi­­nent archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tor in the UK. From 1990 to 2006 he was Chair of Archi­tec­ture (now Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus) at the Bartlett School of Archi­tec­ture, where he trans­formed an aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly sober insti­tu­tion into one of the world’s lead­ing cen­tres of cre­ative design. In 2002, his achieve­ments with Archi­gram were recog­nised when the group was award­ed the RIBA Roy­al Gold Medal. In 2007, he was award­ed a knight­hood for his ser­vices to archi­tec­ture and education.