Shit - The Label's come off. The sign's down. What is it - it was a conference arena last May / a tuned for sound concert happened for three days in August/September it was full of guys and their birds cooking, eating, sleeping, fooling around, and generally living the good life / last week it was full of people, cars and the painful scream of stripduster, houndog and the Chrysler rail as they belted down the quarter mile straight-burn out for grabs / tomorrow it's a...

Let's leave the label off for Christsake - let the sheep back in - the grass needs cutting.

Hang on though - we don't want to upset the sheep - let's put the old label up for today it's a meadow ... what's in a label anyway? The action comes and goes. The servicing goes too, on your back, in your car, on your truck, in your trailer, in your minds. The architecture of the invisible. What's in a label anyway? It's a...

Take the label off a can of beans and what have you got - a can of beans. Take the label off a can of soup and put the beans label on it, and what have you got - a can of beans? No ... a can of soup. Space and time and servicing condition use and activity - labels condition nothing but your mind.

'"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked.' (Through the Looking Glass)
'The Failure of the Modern Movement to establish an architectural language for public buildings is a reflection of a much wider confusion of what public life is about,' (Quote from RIBA Journal.)

FLASH!
A select committee will be set up to study the potential architectural language for ... public baths - public houses - public conveniences, etc., etc. ... yeah, I'm widely confused - what is public life about anyway, and what's architectural language? ... You can always put a label on a building ... you can have a label so that when people arrive they know what they are in for, you could even better that, you could have a taped description - like they have in front of the cages in the zoo ... but then the animals don't know what they are in for.

'The Metropolis today is a classroom; the ads are its teachers.'
'The traditional classroom is an obsolete detention home, a feudal dungeon.' (Marshall McLuhan Counterblast.)

It's not a university - it can't be ... show me, where's the building, where's the label? I have to sit in the comfort of my own home with the telly or radio on to be a part of it, with an occasional chat with my tutor in the local drill hall. That's not a university, a university is a lot of buildings and a lot of people milling around on bicycles ... come on. The Open University asks that you are 21 (pity, why not 16?) or over and have the energy to fill in the application form. Of course there is a mandatory one week residential summer school session for the 25,000 undergraduates - surely this will take place in an enclosure of some description and give, for a week at least, some physical manifestation of university. But supposing some nut puts it under canvas, paper sleeping bags, pnu's or the like ... it's a ?

'By side-stepping the mammoth cost of establishing a residential program, the British have managed to hold the capital budget for Open U's first five years of operation to only $14.4 million - most of which will be devoted to the construction of the University Centre in Buckinghamshire, 50 miles outside London.' (Newsweek, Jan. 25, 1971.)

There we go, I know there would be some physical manifestation of university, a piece of architecture on to which we can hang the label - university. Hold on, though, it's an administrative centre - no students, no caps and gowns, no students union, no colleges and no halls of residence. We can't attach the label ... and what about the architectural language what is an administrative centre in terms of the Open U, the invisible university ... program / input / control / storage / processing / output ... it's a?

People promote activity - activity conditions use - servicing responds to activity+use - time conditions all - there today gone tomorrow.

'On the QE2 you can be totally inaccessible to the rest of the world. Or, if you prefer, the ship's telex, telephone, telegram and picture transmission service are at your disposal 24 hours a day. Lift the 'phone, and shorthand typists, dictaphones, conference rooms, recording facilities, film and slide projectors, screens, blackboards and printers, are all yours. Let us know and we'll even arrange simultaneous translation equipment for you.'

Is it an administrative centre? A university? Government centre? ... A ship? ... It's a ?

'After work - or instead of it - QE2 offers you a West End sized cinema, with three performances a day. Plus night clubs, the theatre bar, card rooms, libraries and four swimming pools. Not to mention sports decks, a Turkish bath, sauna and gambling casino.'

Is it an entertainment centre? Soho? The Strip? ... A ship? ... it's a ?

Sit and play cards - it's a cardroom? Call up a projector - it's a cinema? Drink with your friends - it's a bar? Sit at a typewriter - it's an office? Soak up information - it's education? ... or wrap these up and it's an enclosure ... label the monument and it's architecture?

Goodyear has put eye-pooping colour and cartoons in the sky and they call it 'Super Skytacular' night sign Columbia - more than 7000 lights are mounted on the side of the company's airship, the Columbia. The lights spell out messages and animated cartoons in colour. The sign screen, on either side of the ship, is 105 feet long by 24.5 feet high. A typical six-minute tape consists of 40 million bits of 'on-off' information which, when run through electronic readers aboard the ship, control lamp and colour selection and the speed at which messages are run. It's an airship? It's an educational tool? It's entertaining - it's that, it's instant information ... It's a?

Ron Herron
Archigram, Edited by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron & Mike Webb, 1972 [reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999].