Architecture and Design
modernism seems to have degenerated
Peter Cook,Plug-In University Node project (detail)
elevation and plan, 1965.
unmarried couple in England’, Lancaster
and Fowler made a brilliant partnership,
decorating the most fashionable houses
of the day before Fowler went on to work
with the National Trust, re-dressing its
great houses.
Lancaster once claimed she was better
at choosing butlers than husbands, and in
1948 she married ‘Jubie’ Lancaster, from
whom she and her former husband had
earlier leased Kelmarsh Hall. When the
marriage ended five years later Lancaster
was loath to leave Kelmarsh a second
time, but Haseley Court, a Georgian
house in Oxfordshire, soon provided a
new emotional engagement. She bought
the crumbling house and 80 acres for
d4000. Seventeen years later, when fire
destroyed her painstaking restorations,
she sold the house to Lord Hereford and
moved into the coach-house, quipping
that she was born in a cottage and she
would die in one. True to her word, she
remained there till her death at the age of
ninety-seven.
Witty, inventive and unflinchingly hon-
est, Lancaster wrote to her cousin after
the fire:
How lucky I’ve been to live in such beautiful
places and be able to make them as I
dreamed. . . I’ve adored my houses more than
my friends (or husbands). We are meant to lose
the things we love. Anyway I have no regrets, as
I could not have enjoyed it more. It is like the
end of a party.
Despite such intimate revelations, and
the book’s chatty, familiar tone, one longs
to know more about Nancy Lancaster.
Wood exercises a frustrating degree of
discretion, casually announcing break-
ups, breakdowns, deaths and disasters
with little exploration of the causes or
consequences. Ultimately a biography of
houses more than of people, Wood’s
56 The Art Book volume 13 issue 2 may 2006 r 2006 the authors. journal compilation r 2006 bpl/aah
approach is, perhaps, not inappropriate,
given the subject’s own assessment of
their importance in her life.
Providing a tantalising – if sketchy –
portrait of one of the last century’s most
influential designers, Wood’s book is
lavishly illustrated with poignant snap-
shots, professional photos, detailed plans
and charming paintings. An invaluable
source for architects, garden designers
and interior decorators, it would delight
anybody interested in the social history of
the inter-war years.
katie campbell
Writer and garden historian
ARCHIGRAM: ARCHITECTURE
WITHOUT ARCHITECTURE
simon sadler
MIT Press 2005 d22.95 $35.00
242 pp. 146 mono illus
isbn 0-262-19521-6
S
imon Sadler’s Archigram: Architecture
without Architecture delivers a long
overdue chronicle of the rise, hey-
day, and demise of the British avant-garde
architectural design group, Archigram.
The book appears at a time when Archi-
gram is enjoying a revival in architecture
schools as well as with the architecture
establishment with which, during the
1960s and 1970s, it had an uneasy, often
confrontational relationship. Besides nu-
merous new books and exhibitions about
the group that have proliferated since the
mid-1990s, Archigram received the Royal
Institute of British Architects Royal Gold
Medal in 2002, the highest architectural
honour awarded in Great Britain. Re-
newed interest in Archigram may be
symptomatic of contemporary crises in
the architectural field where, not unlike
the situation in the late 1950s and early
1960s, the profession feels barren; new
theoretical ideas are not in evidence, neo-
into formalism in a contemporary idiom,
and the romance with computer technol-
ogy is getting stale. Furthermore, today’s
students seem eager to discover new ideas
and excitement in design. Archigram’s
work was flashy, fun and fashionable. Its
serious message was couched in playful
terms. Archigram represented the redis-
covery of the avant-garde in its day and
offers the promise of new avant-garde
movements yet to come. Archigram (from
ARCHItecture and teleGRAM) first ap-
peared in 1961 as a reaction to what
seemed to the six core members, Warren
Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton,
David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael
Webb, as the bankruptcy of entrenched
modernism. In an extremely articulate and
readable text, Sadler charts the group’s
publications, installations and attempts at
building, then offers a balanced evaluation
of their work and its reception in the 1960s
and 1970s.
The subtitle of the book, Architecture
without Architecture, refers to Archigram’s
primary production mode: drawing and
publication, as opposed to construction,
and to the group’s gradual movement
away from built form. The group mounted
several exhibitions over the years, orga-
nised an international conference at Folk-
estone on the avant-garde in 1966, and did
build a couple of small projects, but its
influence was primarily through the jour-
nal. Although it began with a tiny circula-
tion, by the second to last issue, Archigram
No. 8, the journal reached an audience of
5,000 readers, primarily in architecture
schools. The journal was polemical, ad-
vocating an optimistic marriage of design
with new technology. What distinguishes
Archigram’s output was twofold: the out-
standing quality of the images produced
and the romance with new technologies of
every kind. Archigram imagined walking
buildings, capsule domiciles (like the
lunar module and space capsules), and
robotic structures.
Archigram advocated indeterminacy in
architecture in opposition to the fixed
programme and form of establishment
modernism. By ‘indeterminacy’ the mem-
bers meant architecture that was changing
and changeable, but they also meant de-
sign without architects. ‘Plug-in’ schemes
were the order of the day; designs in which
some large host structure could accom-
modate constantly shifting insertions of
capsule-like abodes. Archigram also ex-

Sylvie Fleury,Bedroom Ensemble II 1998 r The
artist, 2005. From Design Art byAlex Coles.
perimented with inflatable and portable
structures; Michael Webb’s Suitaloon and
Cushicle projects are two examples of this
type. The Cushicle (air CUSHion vehICLE)
could be blown up to become a living
room complete with lounge chair and
television. The Suitaloon could be grafted
onto the Cushicle for added space. As
Sadler points out, Archigram’s projects
were never really detailed in a believable
way but remained visionary in their
execution. Thus, the Cushicle and Suita-
loon designs look schematic rather than
real, but the ideas were provocative; they
responded to contemporary urban prob-
lems such as congestion, long commutes,
and the increasingly nomadic side of
modern life.
By the 1970s, Archigram had become
more interested in the services inherent in
building design than in the design of the
building space or envelope. The unbuilt
scheme for the Monaco Entertainments
Centre epitomises their approach; the
building was underground and therefore
had no visible physical shape while the
interior was conceived as a series of open
spaces occupied by moveable parts such as
seats, staging and lighting elements. That
is, Archigram seemed to see the architect’s
r 2006 the authors. journal compilation r 2006 bpl/aah
role as one of offering opportunities for
action and interaction with other people
and technology. Sadler underscores the
similarities to the Situationists’ goals as
well as the differences between Archi-
gram’s ideas and those of the Situationist
movement. The unrealised design for the
Monaco Entertainments Centre (1970)
epitomises event-based design. The actual
building was subsumed under the earth
while the spaces were filled with techno-
logical opportunities such as viewing
screens, moveable staging and seating,
robots, and portable toilets.
It is unfortunate that the Archigram
drawings and collages are not printed in
full colour. The black and white reproduc-
tions simply do not do the originals
justice. This is the main weakness of what
is otherwise a thorough and insightful
study. Sadler rightly points out that much
of the continuing strength of the Archi-
gram work is paradoxically due to its
status as drawn rather than built archi-
tecture. This architecture without archi-
tecture still engages the imagination, still
offers food for creative thought. The book
is a valuable contribution to the scholar-
ship on Archigram.
deborah asher barnstone
Washington State University,
School of Architecture.
volume 13 issue 2 may 2006
Architecture and Design
DESIGNART
alex coles
Tate Publishing 2005 d18.99 $49.50
144 pp. 62 col/12 mono illus
isbn 1-85437-520-2
US dist. Harry N Abrams
AN INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN AND
CULTURE 1900 TO THE PRESENT
second edition
penny sparke
Routledge 2004 d14.99 $26.07
280 pp. 73 mono illus
isbn 0-415-26336-0
D
esignArt? The great thing about
Coles’ book is his even-handed
approach to his subject: the blurred
distinctions between art and design,
especially that 3D material whose exact
categorisation tends to elude analysis at
exactly the wrong moment. What sculp-
ture? Coles claims ‘DesignArt’ for his own
expression: to be sure, it is not enticing,
and the confrontational front cover – a
detail from Takahsi Murakami’s (who?) LV
Monolith is not reassuring. Once inside,
however, Coles is amusing and incisive
and quickly sets out his stall. He is not
interested in posturing, or claiming vast
tracts of territory for some vapid new
moment in nothingness: rather, his is
The Art Book 57