The Brutal Birth of Archigram
rchigar, the group witha itle magazine that Became the pre
A eminent architetutal avant-garde of the 19608, was a youthful
flowering of ideas that had been current on the ringes of compet
Tuck because twas something
tions and diseussion groups. ‘All of us we
waiting to happen’, Michael Webb has sad of the Archigram phenomenon.
Weeameara time 96 whenth
Inco and the work flowed out of us. Fora generation immediately after us we
ewasalot of architectural territory ‘omove
Ihad usurped al their architectural land." The territory was let vacant by the
transition ofthe Brataliss, Britain's previous architectural vanguaed, into the
sort of classical respectability embodied by Alison and Peter S
Economist Building, Landon (960-63). Beforeit became famous for designing
Archigram started out asa sort of
scandalous Walking Cities and Living Pos
second wave Brutalists formal and technical possiblities
to heli
‘The rst Archigram was printed by Gestetner on two sheets and dstibuted
in gt via London's Architectural Assoclaion (as) and Regent Stree Polytech
nic o anyone prepated to shell-out ‘the grand price of 6d and 1/6 — mainly
students and newly graduated professionals It was created by an extended
{group of contributors, before its core membership of just six men became.
established in 96 with the publi
bers, Peter Cook and David Greene the former from the a theater hailing
from Nottingham Schoolof Architecture) made the selections for the fisted
tion, conscripting a thi member, Michael Webb, from the Architectural
Association's arch rival, the Regent Stree Polytechnic. They were outspoken
stutents enjaying ‘famous school careets, none more so than Webb. At the
{ime that Webb's 1957-8 student project for a new Furniture Manufacturer's
Building in High Wycombe as belng exhibited. at the Museum of Modern rt
ionof Archigram no.3, Two of those mem-
ar
Figure. Micheal Webb, Furr
Mangfacutes Asoeation ling in
High Wycombe project, evan
Reyent Sire Pooch orth ye,
ester (ote auor fom Roy Payne 2
May 9 Payne was tying atthe
Regent Steet Polteciic herawen 60
ado, and helped ell he maze,
Serve wth Gordon SimbuSchool of architects, London 293/38
‘Nikolaus Pesner, Modern
Retur of Historie, IBA Journal,
Jonathan Hughes, 1m Lnlse
Campbel ,Tontith Cota
‘rchtectre and ts Hetrten Londo
‘Society of Architect Historians of
ison’ page ced in Hogs, 96
1. tsan Hanson, "Polygon Rasa
(drchtcunetn the Lil Magne,
os no1z Mn, December, 72
‘Peter Cook The Eecte Decade Aa
mosphere atthe ax School a3
James Gowan, ed, & Continuing
Experiment Loaringand Teaching at
Archie Pros er, PPaS7-6
‘Soo Goone Kaul. ohn Outram.
Section nts, Archit forma,
Nolin oats w Match oa, 4st
va. Anon, Arcigtm Group, Loni
Dasgn vss, ut November 0s,
to
bid, Heyl edn 955,
ta Archigram a, Landon 96,9.
1 Wiliam Howl wing the AA
Journal vol Febuary 93,0:
‘quoted Brian Hanson, It momento
Ingles’, Rese Archer inthe
Lite agains vol 0, ia,
December ts Ppa
1
|n New York, Nkolaus Pevsner was moved to contrast the generally ‘promis
:ng'stateof British architecture with student work,‘ dismissingitasan attempt
1 ‘out-Gaual Gaud!'> "What will happen with students, asked Reyner
[Banham in his rejoinder to Pevsner, ‘when what they see in thelt history
lectures is stronger and tougher stuff than they get taught in their studi in
tion What happens when the practising masters ofthe day produce only
nneat-beet,and the slides that are show inthe history lectures are do* proof”
‘With this, Banthatn was inciting a retuen to the avant-garde origins of modem
architecture, mapped out in his Theory anc Design inthe Fest Machine Ageot
Launched at just the moment when Brutalism was slipping down a gear
into the municipal. Archigramwas perfotiyin the logicofthe avant-garde and
‘of student agitation, Michael Webb knew the value ofthis sort of agitation,
having been involved in the Regent Street Polytechnic’s architectural
magazine Polygon. Though never as radical as Archigram, the magazine
‘enjoyed an ‘avid student readership’? and the impact ofits frst couple of
editions upon the sterings atthe Architectural Association was ‘critical’ it
ported by is editors Wilfred Marden and John Outram when they transferzed
to the a for their fourth yeas, the later contributing to Archigram. Polygon
the formation of
fed into the student restlessness that had become apparen
‘the British Architectural Students Association (was) in 1990," representing
igartner of Archigram,
1 thesterlty of architecture surround-
Architectural Design explained in
ospieation, ‘student work of the mid-fiftes was all that
could be pointed to’, Eight recent projects all exploring “post-Brucalist
possbiliies, were stuffed on to that first Archigram broadsheet, a collage of
‘meandering images and words. The late Edward Reynolds's project for a
(Concert Hall at Trafalgar Square acted as something ofa allsman, an exemplar
ofthe virtuoso fee-formingat the aa’ Reynolds's cubist handling of form
faceted every surface of te project, shown at the 157 aa student exibition
\which was lauded for is "breakaway ftom graphpaper'!*itseemed 1 a tutor
and Brucalistarchiteet William Howell thatthe new work marked "both an
Inellectual and a poetic reaction against the straight-up-and-down, stletly
rectangular, ee-square and set-square, exposed frame structure’?
the cover announced,
though i took more than a little effort on the part ofthe reader to piece the
‘statement’ together. Words fell about so that they would be read synchro.
ously, snaking around the page asiftheirsum meanings were so outrageous
to the early sities design establishment that they should be subject to a
controlled release, ineligible only to those who were appropriately youthful:
‘Anew generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces that
Seem to reject the precepts of ‘Modern
REJECT curtains - design history graph paper
DIG ACCEPT endorse ~ homogeneity travelators Mn ~expendability
‘Therejection of ‘design’ was traumatic request for architects, and surprising
fiver Archigram’s subsequently massive peoduetion of drawings. But there it
‘was: design, as in the cul-and-deed presentation of solution, was toa stale,
premedi
scribed into bil form there can therefore be io more design in the traditional
‘swenty-five schools and destined to become spa
‘Archigram was an outburst ag
fone in London in the winter of 196.
1965.1" Looking
ed and removed from environmental context to be literally tran
sense ofthe word, The determinism of orthogonals, or the logic ofthe stu:
produced statistical ‘graph’ asa source for environmental control had tog the
same ways the jibe was aimed at thesort of rationalist / Modernist teaching at
the key schools (pat of the fist year a the Bartlett, for instance, was spent
studying science and a choice of ‘allometr, semiotics, Markovian analysis,
sensory thresholds, self-regulating systems, Boolean algebra, theory of1
measurement or the theory of
approaches Archigram proposed Futurist 'expendabilty’,a permit to do away
With designs as soon as thei peak of efficiency has passed.
chitectue should ‘seem to reject precepts ofthe Modern’ ~ the
imits)1 In place of such high-sounding
‘Thenew
precepts taught in the architectural schools, perhaps, though not necessarily
the precepts ofthe Modemist pioneers. Archigram no. announced ‘We ave
uxcrionAtisw’ including the ubiquitous motif ofthe curtain wal. Instead
fof the image of standardisation presented by the curtain wall, trae
‘homogeneity’ would return architecture to its dream of standardised, mass-
produced structures that could be deployed ad hoe. The spirit ofthe machine
age would live again, itscitizens transported by travlator. These youngarchi-
tects sought the uncorrupted source of an ethos which had whetted their
appetites for experimentation, technology and structure,
Like Henry Ford, the Madern Movement had largely ejected “history, at
least in its mote obvious deference tothe Orders, decoration, symmetry and
hierarchical typologies. Yet it had retained others, particularly proportion,
trabeation and axial planning ~ ene only had to look atthe temples in Le
Corbusier's Vers une architecture oF John Summerson's final chapter of The
Classical Language of Architecture (963), oF to Banham's examination of the
Beaux-Arts origins of certain Modernist axioms in the frst chapter of Theory
‘and Design inthe First Machine Ag. The Archigram generation of architects
would not submit to the classical pattern-book. New buildings would be
placed on top of and around those existing buildings whose fixed plans had
lutserved their usefulness. The esult would be architectural disjunction, a
visual breake with yesterday, an anti-dealism. Architecture would embrace
discord, lke jazz pianist renegade Thelonious Monk. and would adopt the
same choppy, strctwise tone in which Archigram's statement was scripted.!®
As the Economist Building showed, not even Brutalism had achieved the
velocity needed to pull out of the classical orbit. In their student
utalison
projects Webb, Cook and Greene dared to tur the logic ofthe New
n upon itself If rutalism -the most challenging style of British architecture
n the Fifties ~ still wanted a frank exposure of process, of circulation, of
response, and a sensitivity to site and technology, Archigram would catty on
meting it out, in spades. The departure point of the youngster, visible ia
Archigram no., was a “topology” (to use a word in vogue in the Fifties) gone
‘mad: an obsessive interest in circulation; ina comples, ‘organic’ relationship
9 andl expression of services; even in a
to site; in a “ational” separ
‘compositional formlessnes derived from Abstract Expressionism and art brut,
Allied 10 Pier Luigi Nevis in-situ ferrocimento method, with an exoskeleton
holding pre-cast floor panels, Webb's Furniture Manufacturer's Building
showed how far the principles could be pushed, and the results were, ifany-
thing, to0 avant-garde, a ‘eartoon architecture’ too flashy to qualify as
Brutalism.® The frame valiantly imposed a visual order to volumes on the
brinkof formlessness, swallowing up showroom and company offices on the
lower floors, lettable office space in atic storeys, with a bulbous auditorium
lingingtothe side through umbilical cords, One could legitimately expose the
services ike the water tower at the Brtalist icon of Hunstanton Secondary
‘School (Alison and Peter Smithson, 940-54). Buta building like the Furniture
Manufacturer's that was apparently nothing but services, stacked crazily in a
frame, lacked decorum. And the expression of circulation in it temporarily
defied categorisation: Reyner Banham, who had discovered the term topo-
loglcal for the Smithsons, ha to rise othe challenge again when he declared
the explosion of work at Regent Steeet Polytechnic to be ‘Howells I tapol
ogy had attempted relate the building to principles derived from geagraphi-
‘al layout and abstract mathematis,‘Bowellism’ related the building to the
or Profsion? thr ded yo
‘rohitetral educaion Britain,
Manchester Manctester Universiy
594 puting Richard Lewelya
Davies The dacation ofan Archie
London 6, ps, and Dean Latour
“Te Bart AA Journal Octobe
vee pe
15. Chistopher Booker, The Neopia
ty of hereto ng
the Fifer an Siti, London alr,
tof por Ince the readeof
‘Archigya di else meant
‘endore'(n De Neophibac acres!
Inter, the conserenveChrstoper
Booker sen explained hat he
embrace both ojzz an sensational
Tangage sii the almost
Indetnabestate ofbeng "hep [0%
inthe groove")
18. See Appleyac Richard Roger
‘grap, Landon and Boston, Faber,
‘ops To the Smathsons it was
Mikey Mouse achiterire
1Enteralninens Bulking preeet
drawing 1981
Figure Peter Cook Car Body Premed
Meal Cabin stdent hosing roe,
circulation ofthe gut and to biological systems, announced in its disturbing,
bobous farms,
Biology and technology-only metaphors forthe Brutalists, were models for
Archigram. Greene took the cue in his startling fet Seaside Entertainments
Building its main chambers havering transhicent like the muscles ofa heart
from an aorta service tower. The implication was thatthe Seaside Building
could comfortably become part of alarger architectural biological machine.
Again, in Cook's Car Body / Pressed Metal Cabin student housing project of
196-2, there seemed to be something too literal about the design, in thiscase
that were expected in
Brutalist circles to be tempered by an instinct for ‘proper’ architecture
Archigram ried toshow that Detroit-styled’ houses were not 2 proposition for
twenty-five year’ hence (asthe Smithsons were at pains to clam in regard to
theirfamous'Pop’ House of te Future for the 1935 Idea! HomeEshibition), but
for the here-and-now of the 19605, thus questioning Brutalismn’s increasiny
austerity and eoncrete fst.
‘Webb, Greene and Cook had got to know each other in 1939‘and used to
snect up prety regularly in a “greasy spoon calf at Swiss Cottage’. Cook
‘oticed the competition entries being submitted by London County Couneil
‘Warcen Chalk, and he
transcription of enthusiasms for industrial desi
(ce) employees Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton a
invited them to contribute tothe second edition of Archigramin 1962, lending
ita professional credibility that it might have lacked had it continued as a
student rag “Crazy stl’, Cook recalled ofthe competition entries from the ree
set. though it would be moze accurate to say thatthe tec work represented
the cutting:edge of wha the new wave of Brtalism could realistically hope to
get bul, Able to take advantage of their relative freedom as recent graduates,
‘Cook, Greene and Webl had been cultivating work that was mote romantic
than that of thei colleagues working inthe real-world grind of the Lee. This
Tbecame evident when teams from both of Archigram’s pools, “graduate and
‘ice’, entered the 196t Lincoln Civle Centre Competition. The Chalk, Herron.
and Crompton entry, which gained a commendation, asin the"late Btls
style that they were deploying at the c's South Bank project: ‘topological’
plan, incorporating any number of iregular polygonal shapes, stacked in el
evation over several levels, pulled together by afew deflly-placed walkways
Contrasting with the hatd-edge approach ofthe tec team were Cook and
jing a la
scaped site. Yet common toboth entries was alove of mound-like buildings,
Greene's more Bowelist sot, poetic, low-rise elevations, hu
which would emerge asa key theme inthe work the Archigram group,Ron Herron had joined the tce’s Schools Division in 1954. The Lec had
previously employed the Brutalist architects whose influence onthe nascent
‘Archigram was so evident; Alison anc Peter Smithson themselves had briefly
worked! in the Schools Division, partly using the time to complete work on
Hunstanton Secondary Sehoo!-* It was at dhe ucc that Hetzon met Warren
Chalk, who joined the same year, and they become inseparable ~ ‘the More:
‘canbe and Wise of architecture'#! Chalk and Hetron’s designs between 1955
and 1998 ~thei Paisley Technical College and Enfield Civic Centre competition
‘nities, and Chall’s Chelsea College of Advanced Education were competent
if modest combinations of sgaos Corbusian styling and a certain Brutlist
ruggedness. Even Herron's more widely noticed 1957 St. Pancras Stareross
Prospect) Secondary School, with Peter Nicholl, had as many fashionable
similarities with the old as with the new. In1g66 Roy Landau singled it out as
an exemplar of young Lee a sdau’s concise description,
Starcross ‘was a Modern- Movement, classically grouped building complex
‘with Garches-smooth faeades'son the other hand, ‘i had the current verna
Jar inverted-1, wincow and used a “movement organising” concourse bridge
aan idea of the Brutaliss®
twas a start forthe young pretenders, at least, and it found ite way inte
select company in GE, Kidder Smith's The New Architecnure of Europe, pub
ecture. Tn 1
igure. Chal Heron and
Compton eth John enor,
Terry Kenedy John Raber Alm
\aterhous) Lincoln Che Cente
CCompetion: pln and elevation, 9
right Cook and Gres Lincola Civic
Figure, Ron lerton and Peer Nichols
for ndon County Counc Sarco
{he areigran Group in regret
‘Guide to Archign srr Land,
sa. The Cook Greene entry forthe
esti County Offices Competion
‘he following yearsas ecomparable
20.Sce Anthony lackson, The Pls of
Arete history of der
Achtectiral rss, 0, B94
oth Cenry Sits Hayward Galley
‘Symposium, Architectural Associaton
Royston Landau, Naw Dnt
Vie, 968 pat
12sgure. Chalk, Heron, Crompton, and
Foln Atenberough. for up leader
"Norman Engaback athe Special Works
Division atheuce, Sout Bank ars
pedestrian deck tothe south-west
‘chtectre of Europ Hasmondswonth
Penguin 1,
a4 Peer Cook, address tothe aa 90
Management Cente, Beck College,
uonelegeal survey’ Architectural
ste
dhe 9.3
Ls
lished by Penguin in 1961, Some features of the Starross schoo! foretold the
increasingly radical cc work that Hezron would be involved in at the South
Bank Centre. For instance, Starcross was designed with the facility to be
enlarged and changed (into a college), much as the South Bank would be,
tecture of endless ‘becoming’ that would preoceupy
evel plan at Starcross were striking. Herron
the arc
anticipai
‘Archigram. The uses of a malt
and Nicholl ook o hear Brutalist ideas of ccculation and multiple function,
borrowed from the Smithsons and Aldo van Fyek. In addition to the “*move.
‘mentorganising” concourse bridge’ that eaught Landau's eye at Starcross,
‘Kidder Smith noted that 'by excavating and clearing the basements of the
houses previously onthe site, a sunken playground, which flows right under
the east end of the elevated teaching block, was ereated s0 that outdoor
recreation could be enjoyed even in bad weather,” a foretaste of the South
Bank's infamous undercroft So itwasthat ideas about multi-level deck access,
Independent systems of movement, he principle of ‘cluster’ and, for that
matter, béton brut, began to be properly realised not so much under the
Bratalist‘avant-garde" itself, but under 'retardataire’ of architects at the Lec,
‘Warren Chalk, the eldest member of the group, admitted tha he could have
fallen in withthe earlier camp of Brutalists~"T fined your lot. I could have
joined the other lot*
CChalk and Herron encountered Dennis Crompton when, upon recommen
ation fom fiend, they persuaded him in 1960 to leave Frederick Gipberd's
office for the glamorous tee Special Works Division, to which they had been.
‘wansferred Together, their South Bank complex would be a snapshot of
advanced architoctural interests at the turn of the new decade. Under Chalk,
Heron, Crompton, and John Attenborough, for group leader Norman
Engleback, the South Bank Arts Centre finally juxtaposed the New Beutalsm
“withthe great achievement of an earlier generation of British Modernist, the
Royal Festival Hall (948-51), which was being remodelled atthe same time.
Contrary tothe Festival Hall's bright, eivi, slightly nautical and unersingly
rational confidence, the South Hank Cente truculently crumbled its wo shut-
tered-concrete concer-hallsand gallery into the riverside, deflecting any hint
ota processional route with blind bends and furtive staircases, reluetant to
reveal so much as front door
‘Though powerfully sculptural the Centre's resistance to beinga resolved
\derlined when compared to its superficially similar Cubist
nal Theatre (967
composition i
neighbour on the other side, Denys Lasdun's N
Which is held in check by its regulating horizontal layers ané ri
Grities and admirers alike soon noted the expressionism ofthe South Bank
(Cente Debisto the 920s, toLe Corbusier and Konstantin Melnikov, evento
Rudolf Steiner could be detected, but in a state too dreamlike to be nailed
as dudes ok a
al Bierdown as st
4 Hobitation-derived staircase on the Queen Elizabeth Hall) Imagery was
nid skylights, the
FHaayward's west window lke pill-box gun installation or visor, the aggression
ight historieal antecedents (with odd exceptions lke the Uh
potent but abstract, the silhouette bristling with pyr
‘ofthe whole ensemble tempered by a comic-book eclecticism ofthe sor that
‘would be found in Archigramno.$, 964
A lugubrious project ~ fist designed in 1960, completed in 1964, and
officially opened in 1967 the strange massing of the South Bank explored
several interests central to Archigram's architecture. The fist was its adapta
tion of the pedestrian net devised by the Smithsons in their 1957 Be
Haupstadt project: the South Bank Centre was the fist serious attempt to build
the Brutalist multi-level city, with the ravines of imaginary vehicular traffic
separated from pedestrian circulation above. The building seemed to have a
disproportionate amount of ‘exterior’, solving atthe same time the classic
design problem of articulating the blank elevation of en aucitorium. Unlike
Berlin Haupstadt though, the South Bank's ‘topological’ walkways purported
ta connect one place to another rather than provide an abstract sense of
mobility: Chalk was assigned to design the walkways and approaches tothe
Centre one rationale being thehope that Bish Rall would build an
tor link from Waterloo station. The building took further cues from the
walkways af Sheffil's famous Pak Hil estate (Levis Womerdey, Jack Lynn
and Ivor Smith, 1959-9). and from the surface textures of surrounding
bouilngs oo: Jon Miler and Chstopher Dean's rtalist Old Vie Theatre
‘workshops (7-8 for Lyons Israel Elis), and Owen Wiliams’
‘warehouse in Starnord
But ofcourse the eiculation plan of the South Bank Centre was far from
being a functional exercise, Exruding a new pedestcan deck from the
Festival Hall's terrace lve, the South Bank Centre willy heaped-up into a
‘miniature mul-level ‘ity As Edward ones and Christopher Woodwardhave
acerbicaly noted. im the event ‘the raised pedestrian decks and bridges seem
both inconvenient and irrelevant om this quiet site with no through rate
from which pedestrians might need protection. The decks are windy, offering
so protection from the weather and are difficult forthe falar disabled tone
‘otate It isa criticism that benefits from hindsight, nd the aéventre of
visiting the complex hassince been curtailed by blocked starcasesand closed
scale
insbury's
terraces, sacrificed to cheap crime prevention and the vicissitudes ofarchitec-
1ral fashion. Nonetheless the South Bank Centre's insensitivity tothe infirm
Dbetrayed its Futurist inspirations, prioritising the young and able-bodied,
motorised vehicles, and air, with ducts heroically sealed and standing proud of
the volumes ofthe building **
The original basic concept, Chalk recalled in 1986, "was to produce an
anonymous pile subservient toa series of pedestrian walkways, a sort of
“Mappin Terrace [the artificial mountain at London Zoo| for people instead of
‘oats? The exposure of pedestrians to wind and wer as they hike along the
bridges, idgesand plateaux of theSouth Bank emphasised the designers! pre
‘occupation with styling the building assome sortof natural or organic feature
The agglomeration of sheer cfs of shuttered wood-grained concrete, con
trasting with the oversaled rack-like rounded deck walls, allied to geology
and weathering, and in Archigram’s self-penned 1971 anthology, the South
Bank Centre was covered in a discussion of the group's fascination with
‘mounds’ and ‘crusts’ (themes evamined in Archigram no 5,19) One draw
ing by Herron even proposed turfing aver the entire structure And so the
nearest Archigram came to major built statements began and ended with the
‘metaphor of the mound, of the disappeared building: the stil-born Mont
Carlo Entertainments Centre (:969-73) wast have been built literally beneath
‘mound.
Figure Pedestrian deck intersection of
te South an Contre
Moya Festal Half
22. Norman Englebac, ares tthe
eh Cenry Society's Hayward Gallery
Sampesum, Acer section,
ondon 20/3138
28. Rober Mawel adres the 2th
‘shmposiam, Areca Associaton,
Leiden 20/3/98,
28 Arrow Sin, dss othe 20th
Cenvary Sots Hayward Galery
symporum, Architectural Associaton,
30. award Jones & Chstopher
Woodard. Gute he Architscrure of
\Weldenfald snd Nicholson, 92, 258
‘a. Foreommentar the Queen
Hizabeth Halls services, sce Reyne
terspered Environment, London,
Ahiecaral Presta, pas 6
aa. Waren Chalk “Achitectureas
‘consumer product vena:the
Architectural Anoviation fora 08,
March 986 pp2a0-2y repainted in
ppazan pea.
3 Ande Sl, dese othe sth
Ceniry Society's Haar Calery
posi, Arteta Asocon
127igure, Peter ook fr Taylor Wood.
Monten Te projet leva
igus. Talo Woodrow Group,
Acomometic droingof ental a,
8
tn 1962 Crompton, Herron and Chalk lett the ice for Taylor
‘Construction, on Theo Crosby'sinitation. Crosby, a pivotal gute ofthe Lon-
don arts scene, was assembling a team forthe rebuilding of Euston Station,
nd later that year he added tothe team three more architects: Cook, Webs
‘and Greene. Thus the two ‘pools’ of Archigram were formally joined into one.
‘The team’s massive Euston project, one of the largest ofits ime, was never to
see the light of day, yet the intensity ofthe creative ‘sub-culture’ permitted by
‘Crosby atthe Euston site hut was undimmed, fuelled by copies of Arehitecraral
Design and Architecture d'Aujourd hui, Cook was able to draw up his eystal-
line, geadesic, Bowelist design fora Montreal Tower knowing that Crosby was
prepared to take t tothe organisers ofthe 1964 Montreal Expo asa project for
‘central feature (in the manner ofthe 3951 Powell and Moya Skylon at the Fes
tival of Britain). Working forthe industrial muscle of Taylor Woodrow made
‘even megastructural developments like the 963 Fulham Road Study, aheady
possibilty.
Tis monolithic. inegularty shaped and round-comered shops, offices ancl
flats were grouped in the mode established by Chalk, Herron and Crompton,
bout in the way thatthe development er
inated ina gigantic glassy geodesic
dome, itshowed the inf uence of Cook, Webb and Greene, Here was evidence
that Archigram was thinking asa group, regardless of whose name (in this case,
Herron's) appeared on the final drawings. The Fulham project was also the
massive, and indeed
sroup's last involvement with urbanism ina tradi
Brutallstsense. Though the Fulham scheme was included inthe groups 1983
Living Cryexhibition atthe Institute of Contemporary Arts (adecsivelyavant-
garde intervention set up at the suggestion of Crosby), the rest ofthe show
‘concentrated on the regeneration of modem life through ‘nom-archicectura
means everyday life, consumption, technology, atmospheres It was spring
board into a world without mass.