Over the last five years Archigram magazine has concerned itself with a break-out from stagnant, art-conscious architecture. Its discussions have passed through prefabrication, throw-away buildings, over-the-counter buildings to the comprehension of forces outside architecture that could be encompassed to widen its scope. More lately, the magazine and the group of architects with whom it is associated have been looking at ways of balancing these technologies against the basic freedom of the individual which it must serve.

It is now possible for every man, through the means of radio and other electronics to be a satellite of the forces of the entire world. Environment is no longer just a matter of hard buildings. A condition can be summoned-up by the turning of a switch. The old labels of ‘building’, ‘vehicle’, place’, ‘structure’ are becoming intermixed. A car may be a house or an extension of the foot that becomes an extension of the head. The emancipation of man is the controlling factor. The artefacts that the exhibition is concerned with need to be scrambled and open-ended in just this way as they will need to be when they become our way of living beyond the limits of architecture.

[Organised by Archigram and the Museum of Modern Art Oxford]