Two magazines in one; (experimentation in 1960s/1940s). “LP” sized 305x305mm (12”) square, two front covers designed by Geoff Reeve; ‘Archigram 6(0)’ red and green; ‘The 40s’ black and white. 11 no sheets 305x128 (offcuts) and 10 no sheets 305x305mm, stapled. In some issues, Archigram's Self Ad [page 11] remain attached to the editorial page [page 16]. Price 3 shillings.

Editorial/production: Peter Cook, editor; Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton
Cover: Geoff Reeve
Editorial & Production Panel: Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, Mike Webb, David Greene
40s selection: Warren Chalk & Ron Herron

Airhouses, Cedric Price; Ideas, John Outram; Latest from the World of Plug-in; Newcomers: Martin Godfrey; Josef Weber; Nick Grimshaw

ARCHIGRAM 6, 1965
Interview with Dennis Crompton

Dennis Crompton
So, Archigram 6, the technology of production: again, it’s a silk-screen print by yours-truly onto a coloured paper, and this one, rather than being stapled was actually glued to the front, so that there weren’t these nasty staples appearing, but the glue has long since collapsed.

Kester Rattenbury
Is it actually record cover size or is it just smaller?

Dennis Crompton
Oh, I don’t know. (measures) Yes, that’s twelve inches square. 1966-65, its round about the time that LP’s appeared.

So this issue has two fronts and no back. There’s one front which is there, and another front which is there.

It has two quite separate issues, or subjects, that it’s discussing. One is what people are doing currently and what’s currently around. Yeah, 1965, Autumn 1965, price three shillings. It’s gone up fifty percent in the UK, 1 franc fifty in France, thirty-five cents in the USA and so on. Now what we also need to pick up on as far as information is concerned: the cover was designed by Geoff Reeve so we must be sure that we credit the people who’ve done things like that. And that is buried in the small print very often. So this youngster Nick Grimshaw appears in here...newcomer...

So, the deal with this, the secret about this, to make it economical...these smaller pages are the top half of that [square] sheet.

Kester Rattenbury
Ah, of course they are – A3?

Dennis Crompton
Ah, well, it’s not A3, because the A sizes hadn’t appeared; we were still on Imperial or Double Crown or something. Yes, it’s one of those archaic paper sizes, but we’ve gone onto a larger press and because we’re using a larger press, we’re using the maximum size the press will print and then guillotining off. In some of the issues, one of the pages still has the extra bit attached to it, so when you say ‘cut-out’ there it means nothing when it's been cut out. That [page 11] was at the top of this page, so you could cut out, but then folding it and putting it in was a pain I guess...so it got cut out anyway.

But here, you can see, we were talking about where it was: Archigram is on sale at Tiranti’s, which is fair enough; in Better Books; Jonathan Zwemmer’s; Mandarin Bookshop in Swiss Cottage and Notting Hill Gate; Vincent, Freal et Cie in Paris; Barbara’s Bookshop in West Chicago; Norman Rose in Colorado – oh no, Colorado Street, Los Angeles – that’s a very long street; Almquist and Wiksell in Stockholm and somebody else in Helsinki; and students from most schools of architecture. So it had now become something that, not many, but a few, book-sellers around the world had. Some of them, like the Tecodo Shoden in Japan would write in when they wanted copies rather than having a bunch of copies; then they turned into having a permanent order for six copies or whatever which we would ship out to them. So if you can imagine, six copies at three shillings a copy is less than a pound anyway... Values have changed, of course.

So here’s Cedric having his bit again [page 2]. Things, again, things taken from industry – what are these people called – is it Bel-Air or Ced-Air? – but a commercially produced inflatable building being reported. But, you know, very intense; I mean, the amount of information on any one of these pages is quite incredible. And it’s only when you start reading it you see how much there is in there. I won’t start reading it -- well I did start reading it but I won’t read it out! John Outram’s still around.

Kester Rattenbury
Did he work on the magazines at this stage?

Dennis Crompton
No, he never worked on the magazine. He was nominally the editor for the first issue of Archigram. The reason for that was Peter and David at that time in 1961 (things have changed since), were very frightened of the RIBA and they thought if they put their name on to some scurrilous, anti-establishment newspaper, they could well be expelled as student members from the RIBA or something or other. So he [Peter] got John Outram to front it up for them, but he didn’t do anything – I mean, he lived in Regents Park Road, a few doors from me at the time, you can find the address its on that first issue – but he still smiles and giggles about it. I haven’t seen him for some years.

The community in London in the early sixties was very close, you know? The people that you would rub shoulders with would include all sorts of people, who at that time you never knew who the hell they were. So, you know, mentioning somebody like Peter Blake, nobody would take any notice of Peter Blake. You’d sort of elbow him out of the way at the bar at the ICA or something; and Richard Hamilton and so on.

So, and then here again we’ve got that same sort of thing, where there’s a drawing which is larger than the page format or would be too small taken down to the format, so you’ve got a blank spread and then the drawing that goes [across the spread].

Kester Rattenbury
You’ve got two cut-offs that join together?

Dennis Crompton
Yeah, you can see the whole of this Joseph Weber piece.

Kester Rattenbury
Did you work out the flatplans? You must have done, before printing?

Dennis Crompton
Oh before printing, yes, but then it was single sheets. Well, generally it wasn’t necessary to work out the flatplans. The pages – like in Archigram 4 – the paste outs for the pages were done as individual pages. Because I was silk-screening the centre fold and the outer cover, that was printed as a single four-page section so I was only doing one screen print, not two or four separate screen prints. So that was planned and then, as I say, it was printed as a four-page section. And I still have the silk-screen that’s that size of paper.

Kester Rattenbury
But something like that obviously must have been, in order to decide that you could do a long drawing?

Dennis Crompton
Yeah, yeah. I mean, despite what anybody might think, we’re all extremely practical in our own particular ways, although it may be quirky-practical. Like David, who you think of as sort-of the poet of the group. You know, when it comes down to it, he’s sort-of interested in garden sheds and silly things like that and they’re real things, it’s not an abstract thing. I mean, I’ve had absurd conversations with Mike Webb. You know, he’s amazing with spray paint, you wouldn’t imagine! I don’t have the patience. I mean, I use spray paint on models and so on, but I don’t have the patience. He will build up a small component for a model: he’ll build up twenty or thirty layers of spray paint so that’s he’s sure; he gives a slight puff and then he leaves it to dry so that there’s no chance of the paint running or anything like that. And it goes incredibly evenly. He has that sort of practical patience, you know? What he’s spray painting is a totally absurd object, but it’s that mixture that’s interesting.

Anyway, as I always point out, there’s a young Peter Murray, YES third year at Bristol before he came to
the AA in London.

As it happens, Peter never gave back the original of this drawing to John Outram, so it’s in the archive. There are probably more pieces that we’ve got but I haven’t found them to link them back. But there are pieces and as we go on I’ll spot them and say ‘Oh there’s something that was in an issue of Archigram’.

It’s interesting, for these projects, you’ve got drawings [in the archive] from that project that aren’t in the magazine, so you can see how the section worked and so on...

This, again, -- I was reading it the other night – is s a list of people that Peter thought you should keep your eye on for the future and it says at the bottom: ‘Address not known by Archigram but significant, Metabolism Group, Japan; Frederick Kiesler, USA; Jersy Soltan, Poland; Constant, Holland.’ This is 1965 – we’d not yet had any real contact with these people, and there’s a whole list. I don’t know, it might be terribly boring but I find it interesting. You know, it’s mentioning Schulze-Felitz, who I was with in Berlin last summer as it happens, Frei Otto, Joseph Weber, Dalibor Veseley, but Dalibor is still in Poland, he hasn’t come to London. There’s all sorts of blasts from the past, Lionel Schein; Paulo Soleri; Yona Friedman; Claud Parent; Cedric Price and Archigram...

Kester Rattenbury
Not a bad list...

Dennis Crompton
Not a bad list. Yeah, yeah, ‘Watch This Space’. But there’s so much in these things. Anyway, that’s one magazine. The other magazine that accompanied that magazine was a thing where Warren did do the layouts. Warren, being the eldest in the group, he was born in 1927, so the Forties was something that he was quite familiar with. I was born in 1935, I was ten in the middle of the forties, so I wasn’t interested in all this stuff, whereas Warren was 17, so he’d picked up on it. And again, there’s an essay of Warren’s that’s concealed in little 35mm contact print size on each of the pages of this. We have published it in the Guide to Archigram, but it’s the sort-of text. I would imagine, if any of the people who read Archigram 6 at the time, and if any of them spotted it and read it, they’d be a very small minority.

Kester Rattenbury
With very good eyes!

Dennis Crompton
Yes, with very good eyes. Yes. Well, you’ve got to spot it in the first place, even to know it’s there. But it’s Warren talking about the illustrations. That’s his style. You see it there in [Archigram] 6 and you see it there in [Archigram] 4. He writes an essay, but the essay is about visual material, so the weight of the information on the pages is visual rather than textual. And Warren was very much like that.

Like any of the projects, we tell totally different stories, you know, because we weren’t clones of each other. You know David well enough, you know his interests are quite different from mine; I’m fascinated by what he’s interested in but I’d never attempt to compete, and the same with Peter. But to have them talk about it, they’ll tell you a whole different set of stories.