edited PETER COOK WARREN CHALK ARCHIGRAM Princeton Architectural Press New York DENNIS CROMPTON RWAY N DAVID GREENE MIKE RON WEBB HERRON PUBLISHED BY Princeton Architectural Press 37 East 7th Street New York, NY 10003 212.995.9620 © 1999 Princeton Architectural Press isbn 1-56898-194-5 All rights reserved. 03 02 01 00 99 5 4 3 2 1 PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA. REVISED EDITION No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher except in the context of reviews. Project editor: Eugenia Bell Special thanks: Ann Alter, Jan Cigliano, Jane Garvie, Caroline Green, Beth Harrison, Clare Jacobson, Mirjana Javornik, Leslie Ann Kent, Mark Lamster, Sara Moss, Annie Nitschke, Lottchen Shivers, Sara Stemen, and Jennifer Thompson of Princeton Architectural Press -Kevin C. Lippert, publisher For a free catalog of books published by Princeton Architectural Press, call 800.722.6657 or visit www.papress.com LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Archigram/ edited by Peter Cook; with a new foreword by Mike Webb. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. p. cm. NA680.A68 1999 1568981945 (alk. paper) Originally published: Basel ; Boston Birkhäuser, 1972. Archigram. Archigram (Group) Architecture, Modern-20th century. Architecture-Research. Other authors: Cook, Peter. Other authors: Archigram (Group) L 99039255 LC SCOBOL PLATERRA) PLAY 1200 REW SCHOOL A comment from Arata Isozaki It was during the mid-1960s. Living in this confused, swelling city of the Far East, I was struck by a series of extraordinary and not undisturbing shock waves emanating from London. I did not resist them, and they lulled me into a pleasant intoxication. There was Pinter's drama, the pop music of the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and the miniskirts of Carnaby Street. But above all there was the enormous destructive power carried to me on the wings of an underground magazine called Archigram. Like artistic movements of the past, these shock waves of the 60s were characterized by their imprecations against the means and ends of the Establishment, but unlike past movements this one had no manifesto. Nor does it seem possible that the Estab- lishment, with the heart of the data- manipulating mechanism of our age resting firmly in its grip, might be shaken by the static act of manifesto manufacture. No, the Establishment is clever: it is a master of disguise, pervading every corner of our daily lives, at times even posing as our- selves. No direct blow, however fierce, can disturb this situation. What is necessary is to exchange our old methods and material for pulses capable of beaming complex stimuli to the senses over a pro- longed period of time. In this society, where information is privi- leged above all else, Archigram has created possibly the only style capable of inducing radical change. To compose a manifesto is a relatively easy task. To direct a virtual shower of projects at the entire world and to maintain that shower over a period of ten years, however, is an achievement of no such mean dimensions. Behind it lies almost inconceivable effort. The reason I value Archigram's work over all that which has been performed during the last ten years to dismantle the apparatus of Modern Architecture is that it has been consistently counter-cultural in character. Archigram has not limited its area of plan- ning to architecture alone. At times its work has been graphic. At times it has been plastic. And at times it has taken the form of new technical proposals. In each case, however, the work done has been totally divorced from the patterned logic architecture has created within itself. When all values have thus been turned topsy- turvy, Archigram has established a new structure of values, a new syntax, and demonstrated the possibility of an inde- pendent subculture. Japan's Metabolism Group, in contrast to Archigram, lacked this perspective on the necessity of dis- covering counter-cultural values. As a result, it made the easy identification with the ideas of managerial planning in the rapidly expanding city economy, and ultimately found itself being manipulated in the interests of the government's mere- tricious policies. Archigram's work is being assessed and appreciated anew today because, not merely in architecture, but in a far broader sphere, pre-established systems of every kind are disintegrating before our eyes. What Archigram has done is to demonstrate clearly one part of this process. It is my hope that with the publication of Archi- gram's work of the last ten years an ever more intense exchange of communication will take place, that the malignant cells of the counter culture will be transplanted to every part of the world, to every area of culture, and that the process of disinte- gration will become increasingly violent and universal. FREDS A comment from Peter Blake I can't think of any one, identifiable event that broadened my own perceptions as drastically as the advent of Archigram. At least in the area of architecture and related matters. Until the day when the first Archigram manifesto appeared on my desk, I had been working and thinking pretty much in the standard, establishment fashion of the 1950s: Great Form Makers, the pure Miesian tradition, everything neat and nice. It is true that I had long been interested in peripheral areas: Charles Eames got me excited over marine hard- ware, Giedion told me about nineteenth- century Patent Office drawings and models of various kinds of equipment, and Philip Johnson lead me to Machine Art. But, on the whole, architecture and urban design, to my mind, had to do with the Great Form Makers - Wright, Corbu, Mies, Grope, with occasional explorations of De Stijl and Rietveld, of the Russian Constructivists, of the Italian Futurists, and so on. Then Archigram struck, and my world hasn't been the same since. I took off for Cape Kennedy (and I've gone there several times since) and saw that 'walking build- ings' easily the size of Seagram were, in fact, a reality; that plug-in capsules con- taining highly sophisticated workshops, and unpluggable at any time, were, in fact, a daily reality in the huge gantries that service the Saturn rockets; that mega- structures with floors that slide up and down and sideways were not something that Harvard students did when they wanted to cop out, but were, in fact, a stunning reality in the largest building on earth the Vehicle Assembly Building, a structure so vast that it could have some- thing like eight Seagrams wheeled into it, and plug those Seagrams into capsules and mobile floors and all the rest; a structure So vast that, under certain weather conditions, clouds sometimes form near its ceiling, 500 ft-plus above sea- level; and it sometimes rains inside. - I really would not have known where to look if it hadn't been for Archigram. Oh, well, I might have got there sooner or later, but life is short and so I owe Archigram half a dozen years. Everything, absolutely everything, suddenly became architecture: I saw an ad in Time magazine, I think, and it showed an aerial view of a completely prefabricated town, with its own roads, heliport, offices, housing, fac- tory, and built-in mobility. It also happened to be afloat about ten miles due South of Shreveport, Louisiana, and it was one of dozens of such science-fiction 'towns' in the Gulf that mined the bottom of the ocean. (That same day somebody an- nounced one of those US 'New Towns' that look like a slicked-up Welwyn Garden City.) It seemed to me that John Johansen would be somebody to com- mission to write for the Architectural Forum about that floating city - and I called him and he flew down there and his life was changed a bit, too. So we all owe something very important to Archigram: the dramatic broadening of our perceptions, our visions. Since Archigram, some of the things that have really in- terested me are, for example, Disney World an absolutely staggering New Town twice the size of Manhattan, with capsulated hotels traversed by monorail trains, and a navy that ranks ninth in the world, and a submarine fleet that ranks fifth, right after the US, the USSR, Britain and France. It has cost $400 million so far, and that is only 10 per cent of it: when its STOL Port and its jetport and its four addi- tional US-Steel-prefabbed hotels and its satellite EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow) are completed, Walt Disney World will run into the billions and it will be by far the most ambitious New Town on earth. Before Archigram, I I would have sneered - as, indeed, I did at Disneyland, California (Charlie Eames bawled me out for that); since Archigram, and its consciousness-raising manifestoes, I no longer sneer. When I think about what Archigram did for me and for some of my contemporaries, I am suddenly reminded of Le Corbusier's Vers Une Architecture - a pamphlet that, in the early 1920s, spelled out visions of a new world through images of automobiles and ships and planes, and of silos and factories, and of plumbing fixtures. The pamphlet has a quaint look about it now, and it needed up-dating. My friends at Archigram have done that job - and a great deal more. And, because of what they have done, the world of architecture in this century and the next will never again be quite as projected. P.S. Critics of Archigram, especially after reading the above, are sure to ask: 'What about the human factor?' - or something like that. The answer, I think, is this: Le Corbusier's most widely-quoted dictum was: 'A house is a machine for living in.' And the same question was asked of him. None of his questioners really understood, for Corbu was talking about French machines machines that are ravishingly beautiful, but don't necessarily work terri- fically well. Corbu's machines were poetic machines; and Archigram's machines are equally poetic. 'What about the human factor? Well, I cannot think of a more humanistic language than the language of poetry; and whether they like it or not, the Archigram gang is a gang of wild-eyed poets. גוב ARCHIGRAM BEYOND ARCHITECTURE | Architecture Archigram 1 In late 1960, in various flats in Hampstead, a loose group of people started to meet: to criticize projects, to concoct letters to the press, to combine to make competition pro- jects, and generally prop one another up against the boredom of working in London architectural offices. The inevitable 'grape- vine' accounted for the dispersed origins: the 'AA', the Regent Street Polytechnic, Bristol, Nottingham. The instinct was to continue the polemic and enthusiasm of architecture school (all were recent graduates), and it became obvious that some publication would help. The main British magazines did not at that time publish student work, so that Archigram was reacting to this as well as the general sterility of the scene. The title came from the notion of a more urgent and simple item than a journal, like a 'telegram' or 'aero- gramme, hence 'architecture)-gram'. The large discussion group began to disinte- grate with the realization that within it was a wide divergence of outlook. By this time Peter Cook, David Greene and Mike Webb, in making a broadsheet; had started a new Group. It was as important to break down real and imagined barriers of form and statement on the page as in built form on the ground, as in these poems by David Greene: The love is gone. The poetry in bricks is lost. We want to drag into building some of the poetry of countdown, orbital helmets, discord of mechanical body transportation methods and leg walking Love gone. Lost our fascinating intricate movings are trapped in soggen brown packets all hidden all art and front, no bone no love. A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of 'Modern' yet in fact retains these precepts. WE HAVE CHOSEN TO BYPASS THE DECAYING BAUHAUS IMAGE WHICH IS AN INSULT TO FUNCTIONALISM. You can roll out steel You can blow up a balloon You can mould plastic any length any size any shape blokes that built the forth bridge THEY DIDN'T WORRY You can roll out paper any length take Chambers' dictionary THAT'S LONG You can build concrete any height FLOW? water flows or doesn't or does flow or not flows YOU CAN WEAVE STRING any mesh TAKE THIS TABLE you've got a top there top and four legs you can sit IN it you sit ON it, UNDER it or half under 8 A new generation of architecture STEVE OSGOOD: 1960 Skin WITH nut bolted vertibrae flow Contain го прош growth plant cool movement TIMOTHY TINKE 195 STMINSTER orm must arise with forms and spaces this bu MICH H JOHN OUTRAM: 1959 CONCERT HALL AT MINSER ORGANIC WHOLE... MARVELL which seem to reject th Archigram 1 Published May 1961 Peter Cook and David Greene/n Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Robert Venturi with an introduction by Vincent Scully The Museum of Modern Art Papers on Architecture The Museum of Modern Art, New York in association with the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago Distributed by New York Graphic Society, Boston Contents Acknowledgments 6 Foreword 8 Introduction 9 Preface 13 1. Nonstraightforward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto 16 2. Complexity and Contradiction vs. Simplification or Picturesqueness 16 3. Ambiguity 20 4. Contradictory Levels: The Phenomenon of "Both-And" in Architecture 23 5. Contradictory Levels Continued: The Double-Functioning Element 34 6. Accommodation and the Limitations of Order: The Conventional Element 41 7. Contradiction Adapted 45 8. Contradiction Juxtaposed 56 9. The Inside and the Outside 70 10. The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole 88 11. Works 106 Notes 132 Photograph Credits 133 Preface This book is both an attempt at architectural criticism and an apologia-an explanation, indirectly, of my work. Because I am a practicing architect, my ideas on architec- ture are inevitably a by-product of the criticism which accompanies working, and which is, as T. S. Eliot has said, of "capital importance. in the work of creation itself. Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labour of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing: this frightful toil is as much critical as creative. I maintain even that the criticism employed by a trained and skilled writer on his own work is the most vital, the highest kind of criticism . . ." ¹ I write, then, as an architect who em- ploys criticism rather than a critic who chooses architecture and this book represents a particular set of emphases, a way of seeing architecture, which I find valid. 1 In the same essay Eliot discusses analysis and compari- son as tools of literary criticism. These critical methods are valid for architecture too: architecture is open to analysis like any other aspect of experience, and is made more vivid by comparisons. Analysis includes the breaking up of archi- tecture into elements, a technique I frequently use even though it is the opposite of the integration which is the final goal of art. However paradoxical it appears, and de- spite the suspicions of many Modern architects, such disin- tegration is a process present in all creation, and it is essential to understanding. Self-consciousness is necessarily a part of creation and criticism. Architects today are too educated to be either primitive or totally spontaneous, and architecture is too complex to be approached with carefully maintained ignorance. As an architect I try to be guided not by habit but by a conscious sense of the past-by precedent, thoughtfully considered. The historical comparisons chosen are part of a continuous tradition relevant to my concerns. When Eliot writes about tradition, his comments are equally relevant to architecture, notwithstanding the more obvious changes in architectural methods due to technological innovations. "In English writing," Eliot says, "we seldom speak of tradi- tion. . . . Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to a work approved, of some pleasing archeological reconstruction. . . . Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, 'tradition' should be positively discouraged. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indis- pensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense in- volves perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe . has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous or- der. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional, and it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his own contemporaneity. ... No poet, no artist of any kind, has his complete meaning alone." 2 I agree with Eliot and reject the obsession of Modern architects who, to quote Aldo van Eyck, "have been harping continually on what is different in our time to such an extent that they have lost touch with what is not differ- ent, with what is essentially the same." ³ 4 The examples chosen reflect my partiality for certain eras: Mannerist, Baroque, and Rococo especially. As Henry-Russell Hitchcock says, "there always exists a real need to re-examine the work of the past. There is, presuma- bly, almost always a generic interest in architectural history among architects; but the aspects, or periods, of history that seem at any given time to merit the closest attention cer- tainly vary with changing sensibilities." * As an artist I frankly write about what I like in architecture: complexity and contradiction. From what we find we like-what we are easily attracted to-we can learn much of what we really are. Louis Kahn has referred to "what a thing wants to be,” but implicit in this statement is its opposite: what the architect wants the thing to be. In the tension and balance between these two lie many of the architect's decisions. The comparisons include some buildings which are nei- ther beautiful nor great, and they have been lifted abstractly from their historical context because I rely less on the idea of style than on the inherent characteristics of specific buildings. Writing as an architect rather than as a scholar, my historical view is that described by Hitchcock: "Once, of course, almost all investigation of the architecture of the past was in aid of its nominal reconstitution-an instru- ment of revivalism. That is no longer true, and there is little reason to fear that it will, in our time, become so again. Both the architects and the historian-critics of the early twentieth century, when they were not merely seeking in the past fresh ammunition for current polemical warfare, taught us to see all architecture, as it were, abstractly, false though such a limited vision probably is to the complex sensibilities that produced most of the great architecture of the past. When we re-examine or discover-this or that aspect of earlier building production today, it is with no idea of repeating its forms, but rather in the expectation of feeding more amply new sensibilities that are wholly the product of the present. To the pure historian this may seem regrettable, as introducing highly subjective elements into what he believes ought to be objective studies. Yet the pure historian, more often than not, will eventually find himself moving in directions that have been already determined by more sensitive weathervanes." 5 I make no special attempt to relate architecture to other things. I have not tried to "improve the connections be- tween science and technology on the one hand, and the humanities and the social sciences on the other . and make of architecture a more human social art." I try to talk about architecture rather than around it. Sir John Summerson has referred to the architects' obsession with "the importance, not of architecture, but of the relation of architecture to other things."" He has pointed out that in this century architects have substituted the "mischievous analogy" for the eclectic imitation of the nineteenth century, and have been staking a claim for architecture rather than producing architecture. The result has been diagrammatic planning. The architect's ever diminishing power and his growing ineffectualness in shaping the whole environment can perhaps be reversed, ironically, by narrowing his con- cerns and concentrating on his own job. Perhaps then relationships and power will take care of themselves. I accept what seem to me architecture's inherent limitations, and attempt to concentrate on the difficult particulars within it rather than the easier abstractions about it ". . . because the arts belong (as the ancients said) to the prac- tical and not the speculative intelligence, there is no sur- rogate for being on the job." 8 9 This book deals with the present, and with the past in relation to the present. It does not attempt to be visionary except insofar as the future is inherent in the reality of the 14 present. It is only indirectly polemical. Everything is said in the context of current architecture and consequently certain targets are attacked-in general, the limitations of orthodox Modern architecture and city planning, in particular, the platitudinous architects who invoke integrity, technology, or electronic programming as ends in architecture, the popularizers who paint "fairy stories over our chaotic reality" "10 and suppress those complexities and contradic- tions inherent in art and experience. Nevertheless, this book is an analysis of what seems to me true for architecture now, rather than a diatribe against what seems false. Note to the Second Edition I wrote this book in the early 1960's as a practicing architect responding to aspects of architectural theory and dogma of that time. The issues are different now, and I think the book might be read today for its general theories about architectural form but also as a particular document of its time, more historical than topical. For this reason the second part of the book, which covers the work of our firm up to 1966, is not expanded in this second edition. I now wish the title had been Complexity and Con- tradiction in Architectural Form, as suggested by Donald Drew Egbert. In the early '60's, however, form was king in architectural thought, and most architectural theory focused without question on aspects of form. Architects seldom thought of symbolism in architecture then, and social issues came to dominate only in the second half of that decade. But in hindsight this book on form in architecture comple- ments our focus on symbolism in architecture several years later in Learning from Las Vegas. To rectify an omission in the acknowledgments of the first edition, I want to express my gratitude to Richard Krautheimer, who shared his insights on Roman Baroque architecture with us Fellows at the American Academy in Rome. I am grateful also to my friend Vincent Scully for his continued and very kind support of this book and of our work. I am happy that The Museum of Modern Art is en- larging the format of this edition so that the illustrations are now more readable. Perhaps it is the fate of all theorists to view the ripples from their works with mixed feelings. I have some- times felt more comfortable with my critics than with those who have agreed with me. The latter have often misapplied or exaggerated the ideas and methods of this book to the point of parody. Some have said the ideas are fine but don't go far enough. But most of the thought here was intended to be suggestive rather than dogmatic, and the method of historical analogy can be taken only so far in architectural criticism. Should an artist go all the way with his or her philosophies? R.V. April, 1977/n 10:28 < To Do Prompt 1: Assignment Details ARCH 3214-001: Hist & Thry of Architecture 2 5G 26 Archigram's projects were highly speculative and often depicted an idealized future where architecture merged with technology to create a dynamic and transformative environment. Archigram wrote: "In a technological society more people will play an active part in determining their own individual environment, in self- determining a way of life. We cannot expect to take this fundamental right out of their hands and go on treating them as cultural and creative morons. We must tackle it from the other end in a positive way" (Cook 1999, 17). Archigram's vision for the future seems to rest on technological tools and creativity from common people. - Examine Archigram's visions of a technological utopia through your perspective today. Where were their visions promising a better future? Refer to and cite specific passages as you engage the discussion. - How did Archigram envision the role of technology in shaping the future of architecture, and what were the key principles guiding their designs? - How do the ideas of consumerism and disposability relate to our contemporary context? Should we design for them? - Do you see Archigram's vision and/or buildings as utopian or dystopian? Explain your rationale with View Discussion 3 5 000 Dashboard Calendar To Do Notifications Inbox 10:28 < To Do Assignment Details 5G 26 Prompt 2: ARCH 3214-001: Hist & Thry of Architecture 2 In Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi wrote, "I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience... Everywhere, except in architecture, complexity and contradiction have been acknowledged" (Venturi 1966, 23). Because life is confusing and contradictory, should architecture also be? - Reflect on this through your lived experience, Complexity and Contraction, and Postmodern architecture. Refer to and cite specific passages as you engage the discussion. - How, in architecture, can chaos and confusion differ from incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture? What does Venturi mean by this statement? - How does Venturi's Postmodernist concept of complexity and contradiction challenge traditional architectural principles of unity and coherence? - What are possible benefits of embracing this approach to architecture? What are possible challenges? Provide examples to augment understanding. View Discussion 3 5 000 Dashboard Calendar To Do Notifications Inbox 10:28 < To Do Prompt 3: Assignment Details ARCH 3214-001: Hist & Thry of Architecture 2 5G 26 Both Archigram and Venturi critiqued the prevailing Modernist Orthodoxy in architecture. Archigram, for example, sought to challenge the patterned architectural thinking and offer consumers new models for dwelling, plug-in structures, pneumatic dwellings, living pods etc. Similarly, Venturi challenged the Modernist emphasis on functionalism, advocating for an architecture that embraces historical references and symbolic meanings. - How do Archigram and Venturi's critiques of the Canonical Modern International Style contribute to a broader understanding of architectural theory and practice? Refer to and cite specific passages as you engage the discussion. - In challenging Canonical Modernism, did either group eliminate the proliferation of the International Style? Why do we still see the International Style today? -Should there be rules in architecture? Should there be building standards for the health and safety of users? - Did the Postmodernist take eclecticism too far? If so, why? If not, why not? Prompt 4: Postmodernist architects often engaged with history in View Discussion 000 3 5 LO Dashboard Calendar To Do Notifications Inbox 10:28 < To Do Prompt 4: Assignment Details ARCH 3214-001: Hist & Thry of Architecture 2 5G 26 Postmodernist architects often engaged with history in their designs, often in contrasting ways. Venturi advocated for an approach, which included incorporating historical references and symbols into architectural forms. Archigram, on the other hand, embraced a forward-looking, technologically-driven vision of the future. - How did Venturi and Archigram each utilize history in their architectural works, and what were the underlying motivations behind their approaches? -What role should history play in architecture? Did the Postmodern architects engage history with reverence or irreverence? - In what ways do their respective approaches to history reflect broader Postmodernist attitudes towards architectural tradition and innovation? - Support your response with specific examples and citations from the writings and projects of Venturi and/or Archigram. Discussion Framework: Part 1 (your initial post): Your initial post must meet the following 000 View Discussion 3 5 LO Dashboard Calendar To Do Notifications Inbox 10:28 < To Do Assignment Details 5G 26 ARCH 3214-001: Hist & Thry of Architecture 2 Discussion Framework: Part 1 (your initial post): Your initial post must meet the following: 1. Respond to one of the prompt options for the week. (That is not a free-write or write whatever you want). 2. Title the post to correspond to the chosen prompt. 3. Compose a response that consists of at least 200 words, of your own writing, which critically examine the reading(s) and engage the prompt. (Please omit any unnecessary fluff to reach a particular word count.) 4. Express your thoughts in clear and careful writing. Make sure to type, review, and edit before posting. (Please do not write like you are Snapchatting or texting a friend.) Use complete sentences and appropriate terminology. Provide evidence from the text to support your position. Where relevant, refer to direct passages using the Chicago Manual of Style Author Date parenthetical citation. These quotations are not included in your reflection word count. 5. Thoughtfully engage with peers' work. Some responses may include concluding questions to further discussion. For Part 2 (your engagement post): 1. You then reply to at least one person with a substantive post, which is around at least 150 words. (No fluff). 2. Your reply must do the following: 1. The engagement response utilizes one technique of Bailey's guide to participating. 2. Your reply begins by identifying which technique that you are doing leg #5 Offer an Obiection) View Discussion 000 3 5 LO Dashboard Calendar To Do Notifications Inbox