Professional printing was funded by money won by Peter Cook (competition for a Gas House) Contains ad for the LCC. Sold for 1s 6d (7.5p); money posted by readers on receipt of magazine. Copies are rare
ARCHIGRAM 2, 1962
Interview with
Dennis Crompton
Dennis Crompton
This was the second issue, a year or so later. By this time Ron [Herron], Warren [Chalk] and myself were in contact with Peter, David and Mike, mainly because Peter wanted us to contribute to the second issue of
Archigram. We weren’t big buddies by then, that came slightly later.
Just before this issue came out, Peter had entered a Student or a Young Architects Competition for a Gas House and he’d won a prize. He put some of the prize money --or maybe all of the prize money -- into the production of the second issue of
Archigram; because he wanted to, as he puts it, use “proper printing”. So the text pages were actually typeset with metal type because there wasn’t any digital type-settings then.
Both issues 1 and 2 are extremely rare; this is the only one I’ve got [of
Archigram 2] and it’s got notes written on it and so on. It had, I think, four pages of type written and printed by letterpress pages; and other pages, like this one, which were printed offset litho.
And these two projects are the reason, Peter had got in touch with ...
Professional printing was funded by money won by Peter Cook (competition for a Gas House) Contains ad for the LCC. Sold for 1s 6d (7.5p); money posted by readers on receipt of magazine. Copies are rare
ARCHIGRAM 2, 1962
Interview with
Dennis Crompton
Dennis Crompton
This was the second issue, a year or so later. By this time Ron [Herron], Warren [Chalk] and myself were in contact with Peter, David and Mike, mainly because Peter wanted us to contribute to the second issue of
Archigram. We weren’t big buddies by then, that came slightly later.
Just before this issue came out, Peter had entered a Student or a Young Architects Competition for a Gas House and he’d won a prize. He put some of the prize money --or maybe all of the prize money -- into the production of the second issue of
Archigram; because he wanted to, as he puts it, use “proper printing”. So the text pages were actually typeset with metal type because there wasn’t any digital type-settings then.
Both issues 1 and 2 are extremely rare; this is the only one I’ve got [of
Archigram 2] and it’s got notes written on it and so on. It had, I think, four pages of type written and printed by letterpress pages; and other pages, like this one, which were printed offset litho.
And these two projects are the reason, Peter had got in touch with Ron, Warren and myself. We did a competition for the Westminster Housing -- Lillington Street Housing -- that Peter liked. That was the plan of it, and the elevation was on the front sheet. So this was all highly organised: stapled down one edge, printed on both litho and letterpresses.
So there was a guy Ken Martin, I haven’t met him once in the last ten years. I think it was a project at Liverpool, and various people contributed. Andrew Anderson, whose project is there, was a student with Peter at the AA at the time, part of a group that were called -- I don’t know if only by Peter -- The Christian Weirdies. Andrew became the architect of the fabric, I think, of one of the Cathedrals, later on [Chelmsford]. And again, it’s got projects by Peter, Mike, David. Cedric [Price] had appeared on here, Andrew Anderson (the guy we were just talking about) and Tony Gwilliam, all of whom were young graduates at the time.
Now that page
was folded, folded back to go in [page 5]. I suspect the cutting was done by hand because to fold back in like that it has to have a notch cut out of it.
Kester Rattenbury
And would you have done that yourselves or would that have been partly professionally done?
Dennis Crompton
It looks to have been die-cut. Again, I have no memory, and I doubt that Peter has particularly, but from the quality of the stapling, I would say that was done by hand. But I think the trimming was done on guillotines and so on.
And then there’s a page of text, another couple of projects, Timothy Tinker and so on, David Lewis (I wonder if that’s the same David Lewis?) Hang on, there are two pages missing from this one.
What happened very early on was Peter met up with David Rock, who was part of Architects Co-Partnership [ACP]. David was very generous in finding support, so there was a page in I think, the next sort-of six issues that was paid for by David Rock of ACP. And there was a page from the London County Council. Goodness knows how Peter persuaded them to put money into it, but it was there.
Kester Rattenbury
Corporate advertising!
Dennis Crompton
Corporate advertising, yes. Support of the arts.
