Archigram Began Life as a Magazine produced at home by the members of the group, showing experimental work to a growing, global audience. Nine (and a half) seminal, individually designed, hugely influential, and now very rare magazines were produced between 1961 and 1974. The last ‘half’ was an update on the group’s office work rather than a ‘full’ Archigram magazine.
First Archigram magazine. Two sheets of paper of different sizes stapled together, containing text and collage of projects. Black and white with red potato print dot. Print run of around 400. Price sixpence. Video available in Magazines section.
Archigram Paper One. Edited (nominally) by David Usborne, 64 Regents Park Road London NW1. Produced by Peter Cook and David Greene; text largely by Greene; composition largely by Cook. Produced in James Cubitt’s office. Copies are rare
ARCHIGRAM 1, 1961.
Interview with Dennis Crompton
Dennis Crompton
The very beginning of things. It was just two sheets. The first sheet was produced on an office duplicating machine; one of those things where you write or cut a stencil and then sort-of wind it around. And a piece of potato was cut out to make the red dot on it. This, basically, was done by Peter [Cook] and David [Greene]; David providing the sort-of-poetry words and Peter putting it together.
When I talk about these magazines, what’s interesting from my point of view as somebody who does books, is that this was the beginning of the availability of offset litho[graph], as a generally available thing, rather than something within a professional context. So this was right at the beginning.
This was, as you might say, ‘properly’ produced – the second sheet of the first issue – and had the projects that Peter and Mike [Webb] and David had been working on during the previous two or three years [at university]; like Mike’s Furniture Factory from the Regent Street Poly [now University of Westminster], David’s Mosque from Not...
Archigram Paper One. Edited (nominally) by David Usborne, 64 Regents Park Road London NW1. Produced by Peter Cook and David Greene; text largely by Greene; composition largely by Cook. Produced in James Cubitt’s office. Copies are rare
ARCHIGRAM 1, 1961.
Interview with Dennis Crompton
Dennis Crompton
The very beginning of things. It was just two sheets. The first sheet was produced on an office duplicating machine; one of those things where you write or cut a stencil and then sort-of wind it around. And a piece of potato was cut out to make the red dot on it. This, basically, was done by Peter [Cook] and David [Greene]; David providing the sort-of-poetry words and Peter putting it together.
When I talk about these magazines, what’s interesting from my point of view as somebody who does books, is that this was the beginning of the availability of offset litho[graph], as a generally available thing, rather than something within a professional context. So this was right at the beginning.
This was, as you might say, ‘properly’ produced – the second sheet of the first issue – and had the projects that Peter and Mike [Webb] and David had been working on during the previous two or three years [at university]; like Mike’s Furniture Factory from the Regent Street Poly [now University of Westminster], David’s Mosque from Nottingham [School of Architecture] and Peter had worked on this Piccadilly project with a guy called Gordon Sainsbury. There are various others by two or three other people who were interested, like John Outram who at that time maybe had just graduated from the AA [Architectural Association], I don’t know, and people that I don’t know what’s happened to. Oh well. Obviously, in 1961 Edward Reynolds had died already, but this was a student project from the AA for a theatre, I think in Leicester Square. But they were the sort of things that were going on at the time.
As I said, when this came out -- this sheet is actually a facsimile, it’s not an original sheet -- the two pages were stapled together at the top corner. I can’t remember precisely, I think about 400 were printed, and after some time Peter still had like 350 of them left! But they’re all gone now, a long time ago. So that was that, and that was after Peter and David and Mike had all graduated, well, had all finished in their full time education.
Kester Rattenbury
Where did they do it?
Dennis Crompton
The magazine was done in James Cubitt’s office
Kester Rattenbury
Was the second page folded or was it just flat as you’ve showed it?
Dennis Crompton
Well, it was folded for being transported, I think. I wasn’t witness to this because it was before I met Peter and David and Mike, but the copies I have from that time, the first sheet wasn’t folded but the second sheet had a Z-fold so that it folded to be the same size as the first one. But whether that was general… I can’t imagine Peter sitting down and folding them all, you know. Hazel [Cook, Peter’s first wife] might have folded a few of them.
This, the first Archigram, is a statement of the standpoint of the new Generation of Architecture – Future papers will try to project further the outlook of this Generation, taking certain aspects in greater detail.
In this paper David Greene and Peter Cook present for Archigram the new architecture as they see it.
BACKGROUND
1957
AA exhibition showed breakaway from graphpaper. Reynold’s Concert Hall was the outstanding version.
Form
Futurism
Freedom
1958
‘FURNITURE MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION’ schemes at POLY: M. Webb’s taken further than others termed ‘Bowellism’.
‘FLOW PATTERN’ defined buildings.
T. Tinker’s an example
D. Greene’s mosque
J. Outram’s concert hall.
Skin-flow.
Expressionism – Flow – Skin – Plastics – Skin – Space
1959 PLASTICS
Osgood’s Teignmouth
R. Manley’s seafront
Cook – Sainsbury
Piccadilly
Environment – Skin – Space
1960
Nature – Mechanics – Flow – Environment
1961
Skin – Architecture – Plastics
you can roll out steel any length
you can blow up a balloon any size
you can mould plastic any shape
blokes that built the Forth Bridge
THEY DIDN’T WORRY
you can roll out paper any length
take Chamber’s 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
the love is gone
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
synthetic design and instant
plans and reasonableness
and flat buildings lie heavy in the bowels
As clouds whisper across the sky
and earth smells explode the heart we
clamber around with tiles and earthenware
and leatherbound cost planned books of
mediaeval methods soulless grey.
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 BY-PASS THE DECAYING BAUHAUS IMAGE
WHICH IS AN INSULT TO FUNCTIONALISM.
ARCHIGRAM IS EDITED BY DAVID USBORNE: ENQUIRIES AND FURTHER COPIES MAY BE HAD FROM HIM AT 84 REGENTS PARK ROAD, LONDON NW1
