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 SimbuSchool 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 of1 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 1Enteralninens 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 12sgure. 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 Bierdown 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 127igure, 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.