ARCHIGRAMMonograph

ArchitecturalCollage+Drawings
DanielWinstead


Archigram neither published a sterile journal nor
did they proclaim a stringent manifesto. They offered a collagein all its meanings-a cut-and-paste, drawn tour dhorizon of
urban networking. A kind of magical mystery tour of new urbanity
-Ira Mazzoni

4th year work by Mike Webb

In the year 1960 a group of young architects started to gather into a group to criticize projects, write letters
to the newspapers and make competition projects. This
was somewhat of an escape from the boring monotony of
their London architectural offices. This group was made
up of Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb. They were
all recently graduating from their different architectural
schools and did not want to let go of the enthusiasm that
was that they found in architecture school. After continually meeting together they came up with the title Archigram for themselves. This name referenced telegrams,
which they saw as urgent and simple. The newly formed
group decided to publish a magazine of their own, containing their ideas and creations. Since the British publications at the time would not print student work they had
no other choice. Archigram collectively decided that their
work would respond to space travel, the moon landings
and anything science fiction. Their historical inspirations
came from artist-architects who had envisioned flexible,
organic and even nomadic structures, like Buckminster
Fuller, and Bruno Taut. This influence is obviously in their
work for Archigram but it also come through in their earlier student work while they in school.


Their first exhibition that they created took place
at the Institute of Contemporary art in London in 1963. It
was called Living city, it was the first project that they
all contributed to. The general idea behind living city was
about expressing the vitality of life rather than a suggestion for a new city plan. They did not see architecture
playing a very major role in the environment of the city,
but instead the total environment is what was important.
They considered the rain falling on the streets or a car
driving through the city as important as the architecture,
and a regard for everything in the city being equally as
important by being represented in their collages for this
project. The collages themselves consisted of pictures of
many different elements of a metropolis, including architecture. They saw the living city as an organism designed
to condition the occupant by changing the world around
thim, making him completely dependant on a machine
brain that would carry the observer to different compartments called Gloops. Instead of just drawing what
these Gloops looked like, they instead made collages that
showed the purpose of a certain Gloop.
A Living City collage explaining the project

A collage a of a Gloop


The images and ideas of the living city gave way
to the interchange project by Ron Herron and Warren
Chalk. It was a theoretical project that had a multi-transportation node that connected to different types of travel
to each other. These ideas of a machine that connected
the city and contained every day life was now being
given a physical form. Archigram stated that architecture
was no longer important to our lives, and every human
needed to abandon the cities and start a vast suburb
where we can start anew.

Interchange project


In 1964 Archigram started looking at mankinds
achievements, like space travel and numerous other
technological achievements and tried to figure out what
this all meant for the future of architecture. Warren Chalk
stated that It is an Enigma that no single architect or
design can hold a candle to the particular iconography
(of the support structures at cape Kennedy where rockets
were blasting off from). It was very important to Warren
Chalk that new architecture not only performed in a completely new way than what we were used to, but that the
new architecture would aesthetically look like it was out
of a science fiction. This is evident in the collage drawings
he made showed walking cities that looked almost like
spaceships. The drawing elements of these collages were
two-dimensional while photographic elements added a
level of deep space that referenced elements in our world
that already exist.
Walking Cities

Image collage describing Walking Cities

Detail of Walking Cities


Their project Plug-in City was a prototype city project that contained capsule like housing that could constantly be added to an enormous super infrastructure. These
ideas were represented in section, plan and axonometric
and detailed the vast inter-workings of this city structure.
Through different diagrams they gave detailed descriptions
on how the city worked. Paint added a colorful layer to
these drawing to give life to what could be seen as sterile
drawings.

An axon of Plug-in City

Diagram explaining project

Section drawing


Collage drawing became more detailed than ever
during the project Drive-in Housing. These collages
through painting, drawing and pasting images onto the
diagrams showed how these houses were to work. Images of modern cars, and families were the constant iconography that they chose to put in this work to get across a
message of a new type of normalcy they hoped to bring.
The use of perspective, not just through image pasting;
but through drawing became more important to show the
different aspects of their designs.

Perspective Collage

Image Collage

Image Collage


Control and choice was a major theme in the 60s
and 70s and Archigram decided to make a type of architecture that changed and morphed to facilitate the needs
of the inhabitant. The architectural drawings for this type
of machine architecture Looked like an advertisements
that were current in the 60s and 70s. The imagery of
Popular culture was consciously leaking into their representation.

An idea Collage


The Instant City project is the manifestation
several different small ideas and combining them into
one large idea. Instant city is the idea of a traveling metropolis that instantly connects cultures though the use of
televisions and other various technologies. The collages
for these left the architectural parts more ambiguous and
focused more on the conceptual ideas of the project.
These collages are somewhat two-dimensional and have
only shallow space, while others from the same project
are more perspective like containing deep space. The
collages and the ideas they contained considered were
more important than the physical architecture that these
images would inform.
Perspective Collage

Shallow/Deep Space Collage

Instant City Collage

Instant City Collage, mostly made up of Images

Conclusion

The Kunsthaus Graz

Haus-Rucker-Co

Archigrams designs were never constructed into
physical pieces of architecture. The only architect out
of the group to design and construct a notable piece of
architecture is Peter Cook. His design for the Kunsthaus
Graz in Graz Austria, it is reminiscent of projects like
The Walking City and Plug-in City. Despite the lack
of built work they were extremely influential to movements like Metabolism that advocated architecture not
be a static element. The Compositions, iconography,
chaos and formal arrangements put forth in Archigrams
collage drawings are clearly evident in works from HausRucker-Co, Gunther Domenig, Walter Pichler and Coop
Himmelb(l)au to name a few. Though the dynamic nature
of the programmatic elements present in Archigrams collages are not yet physically present in most of the architecture that exist presently, these ideas will still be influential to future iterations of architecture still to come.

Bibliography

Sources:
Cook, Peter. Archigram. New York: Praeger, 1973. Print.
Cook, Peter. Archigram. Basel [Switzerland: Birkhuser
Verlag, 1991. Print.
Cook, Peter. Experimental Architecture. New York: Universe, 1970. Print.
http://www.archigram.net
Images
Cook, Peter. Archigram. New York: Praeger, 1973. Print.
Cook, Peter. Archigram. Basel [Switzerland: Birkhuser
Verlag, 1991. Print.
http://www.archigram.net