‘I don’t really agree with the idea of utopianism,’ Sir Peter Cook tells designboom editor-in-chief, Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou, during our live conversation at the stage of the Basque Country International Architecture Biennial, Mugak/2025.

Curated by architect, researcher, and curator María Arana Zubiate, the biennial unfolds under the theme of Castles in the Air, or How to Build Utopia Today, exploring whether visionary thinking still has a place in an age dominated by pragmatism. The legendary architect and co-founder of Archigram participates in the exhibition with two projects – Plug-in City from 1964 and the more recent Filter City – presented as part of the section Escape Utopias alongside New Babylon by Constant, and Exodus and Hyperbuilding by Rem Koolhaas. 

Although many of his projects, including the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz, Austria, and the Drawing Studio for Arts University Bournemouth, have been realized, Cook’s most important tool remains drawing. Through fantastical, colorful drawings that express his visionary ideas of what cities could look like, he has influenced and inspired architecture and architectural thinking over the past six decades.

Sir Peter Cook and Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou at the stage of Mugak/2025

from ‘pie-in-the-skY SCHEMES’ to architectural reality

The British architect does not perceive the imaginary visions of his drawings as something separate to what might be buildable. ‘It is usual to say that there is the utopian world, and put a box around it, and then there’s the real world,’ he explains during our conversation. ‘In a lot of architecture schools, the professor will say, don’t look at that, it’s just a utopian idea, it has nothing to do with what can be done. And I think professors are often the worst offenders, because the fact that it might be buildable makes them slightly nervous. What do we tell the kids then?’

‘I don’t think there’s any dividing line. One day, I was chatting in the street with Rem Koolhaas, who used to live near me, and we were going through all the people we remembered at the Architectural Association who had been dismissed, including ourselves, as drawers. Drawing people who made these pie-in-the-sky schemes. And we listed about 20 of them, including ourselves, who had built. But it was very comfortable to say there’s utopia, and then there’s proper building.’

Here, Cook returns to a recurring theme in his thinking, that the distance between speculation and construction is far thinner than most assume.‘Had something like the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz been shown as a drawing, people would say, ah, yes, but it’s not a real building. And then it’s there, you can walk inside it, have a pee inside it, and put an exhibition inside it. It’s a building, like buildings are.

You can say that there are certain parts of it that are very normal, but there is no dividing line. And I still feel that quite vehemently. Just as it amused me to do the drawing that showed the Play Pavilion in London as a piece of Instant City. Because you could have taken that pavilion, put it in the Instant City drawing and say, oh, yes, that’s just a piece of it. I‘m not saying absolutely every drawing is 100% buildable, but it’s a bloody sight more buildable than people like to give it room for. And I think the connection is important.’ 

Kunsthaus Graz, bird’s-eye view | image Zepp-Cam. 2004/Graz, Austria

DRAWING AS CONTINUUM, NOT ESCAPE

Cook repeatedly returns to the danger of isolating speculative work from architectural practice. ‘If you categorize it as utopian and then declare that this is one thing and that is another, it becomes very, very dangerous,’ he warns. History, he observes, is full of ideas once dismissed as fantasy that eventually materialized. ‘There’s a whole history throughout civilization of things that were dreams that suddenly somebody was surprised by and said, oh, bloody hell, it’s there,’ he adds.

For Cook, the value of speculative work lies precisely in its proximity to reality. ‘Most of the buildings, even the sort of weirder things or imaginative things, have an arrangement of parts,’ he mentions. Whether inserting structures into a hillside or drawing something nearly abstract, he insists he always carries a clear sense of ‘the size of it and how you would access it and what you would make it from.’ His refusal to separate visionary thinking from architectural logic is consistent: ‘There is no dividing line.’

Plug-In City versus Kunsthaus Graz, drawing versus pavilion – for Cook, these are variations of the same continuum. Even projects that appear whimsical are rooted in architectural intent. This attitude extends to how he approaches teaching. He sees drawing as a space for testing architectural thinking. ‘We’re investigators,’ he tells us. ‘And you can investigate with a paintbrush or with a computer or with a measuring rod… we’re still in the doing-it business.’

Kunsthaus Graz, view from the Schlossberg | image Universalmuseum Joanneum/N. Lackner

OPTIMISM, COMPUTATION, AND THE FUTURE

When the conversation shifts to the future and whether optimism is still relevant, Cook’s response is immediate: ‘Oh, absolutely.’ But he is careful to distinguish optimism from naivety. He describes the pandemic as having become ‘a great excuse for gloomers,’ fuelling a culture of resignation he finds unhelpful. Instead, he places his hopes in the emerging generation of computational designers. ‘The people who are doing wonderful things with computational architecture do have the fire in their eyes. They still have the fire in their eyes.’ Geographically, he sees momentum shifting away from Europe. ‘I think the new architecture is coming from the far East,’ he suggests. ‘Not because of cultural ideology, but because they seem not quite so nervous.’

In response to the question about whether his works reflect escapism, Cook resists the idea. ‘There might be, but I would see that as a weakness,’ he replies. For him, these drawings are probes into alternative ways of living. His reflections drift toward the in-between spaces of the urban fabric, suburbs, valley towns, and industrial sheds threading through landscapes. ‘There are many forms of utopia… many forms of the device directed towards a notion,’ he notes.

What fascinates him is how environments stitch themselves together: ‘The notion of how you knit a city interests me tremendously.’ He describes flying over Spain, observing towns splintering into ‘shed, shed, shed,’ and becomes animated about the hidden intelligence within Chinese shophouses: ‘Is it a shop? Is it an industry? Is it family? Is it extended?’ These hybrid conditions, he argues, are not utopias at all but the material of architecture itself: ‘We’re in the let’s-see-how-you-do-it business.’

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

‘LOOK, LOOK, LOOK’: advice for the next generation

Invited to share what guidance he would offer to a younger generation intent on imagining beyond the ordinary, Cook answers without hesitation: ‘Look. I always say look.’ He illustrates the point with an anecdote about a talented AA student designing a bus station from an American reference rather than her own daily commute. ‘Do you remember getting off the bus?’ he had asked her, a question that, for him, exposes how easily designers rely on ‘packaged information’ instead of lived experience.

True understanding, he insists, comes from attentive observation, noticing how ‘the houses on the cliff’ shift into ‘a smart town,’ where ‘the tourists don’t go,’ and ‘where the backyard industry’ hides. ‘It has to do with looking,’ he emphasizes. ‘The keyword is look. Look, look, look. Watch how you get out of the bus if you’re going to design a bus station. Not what it tells you in a manual.’

Listening to Cook, it becomes clear that utopia isn’t elsewhere. It sits in the sketchbook, in the act of looking, in the split second when a drawing becomes a proposition. The future of architecture is all about staying curious enough to keep on drawing. 

Sir Peter Cook revolutionized modern architecture with visionary projects

installation view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 © the artist | image courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome

Plug-in City (1970/2012) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on board, 79 x 164 cm | © Peter Cook

colorful drawings express his visionary ideas of what cities could look like

The Play Pavilion, designed by Peter Cook (Peter Cook Studio Crablab), in collaboration with Serpentine and the LEGO Group © Peter Cook (Peter Cook Studio Crablab) | image by Andy Stagg

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

his vision aligns with the theme of the Mugak/ Biennial

Drawing Studio for Arts University Bournemouth | image courtesy of CRAB Studio

installation view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 © the artist | image courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome

for Cook, the value of speculative work lies precisely in its proximity to reality

WU Department of Law and Central Administration | image courtesy of CRAB Studio

sir Peter Cook continues to inspire generations of architects

Filter Cities (2023) | VR | © Peter Cook

project info:

name: Designboom in conversation with British architect | @sirpetercookatchap

event: Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial 2025 | @mugakbienal

location: Basque Country, Spain

theme: Castles in the Air, or How to Build Utopia Today

curator: María Arana Zubiate

The post ‘I don’t agree with the idea of utopia’: sir peter cook on optimism and the power of drawing appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Archigram 10 is the latest publication from the infamous group of pioneering architectural theorists that changed architecture irrevocably in the 1960s and 70s. It arrives 50 years after the group’s last issue, Archigram 9½, released in 1974. Archigram has reformed to examine where architecture is currently and where it might go next. This new edition is set to be published by Circa Press and edited by Sir Peter Cook, with contributions from Archigram members Dennis Crompton, David Greene, and Michael Webb. Along with new work by Peter Cook, there are contributions from critics and a host of architects, young and old, whose work resonates with the Archigram ethos.

Formed in London, in 1960, Archigram turned conventional architectural thinking on its head. Neo-futurist, anti-heroic, and pro-consumerist, the group tapped into the 1960s’ Pop Art zeitgeist and drew inspiration from technologies not conventionally applied to architecture. The result was a family of hypothetical objects/buildings that moved, grew, flew, and walked. It inspired generations of architects to radically rethink the confines of traditional practice and imagine a better future.

all images courtesy of Circa Press

Archigram 10 features Established names and younger designers

Contributors for the new publications are formed out of a huge variety of practitioners and teachers across multiple generations, with radically different approaches to architecture. They are united by a willingness to explore the limits of their practice, drawing on new digital influences and taking inspiration from the natural world. The writers are based around the world, including North and South America, Japan, and all over Europe. Established names such as Hitoshi Abe, Odile Decq, and Thom Mayne sit alongside younger researchers and artists who weren’t even born when the last publication came out.

Architect Peter Cook, founding member of Archigram, said: ‘When ARCHIGRAM 1 was launched in 1961 (the same year as’ Private Eye’), David Greene, Mike Webb and I were hitting out at the dreariness of the architecture going up around us—not just with words but by offering up a new, explosive architecture. Nine ARCHIGRAMS later, we three plus Ron Herron, Warren Chalk, and Dennis Crompton had won competitions and influenced key architects from Tokyo, Milan, Los Angeles, and Vienna. After fifty years the same protest—and idea—seems necessary. New protagonists, ranging from my generation through to people in their twenties are in ARCHIGRAM 10. With (as always) lots of drawings…Drawings are exciting. Drawings can be very, very precise. Drawings can be wayward. Drawings can be prescient.’ Published by Circa Press with the generous support of ABB, Archigram 10 reflects a culture of technological awareness and experimentation.

Archigram 10 marks the return of the visionary architectural group after 50 years

the latest edition explores where architecture stands today and its potential future directions

edited by Sir Peter Cook, Archigram 10 includes contributions from Archigram founders and new voices

Archigram members Dennis Crompton, David Greene, and Michael Webb revisit their revolutionary ideas

contributors range from established architects to younger talents inspired by Archigram’s ethos

the magazine embodies a culture of experimentation, bridging past insights and modern technologies

Archigram’s playful yet radical approach continues to influence contemporary architecture

Archigram’s neo-futurist and pro-consumerist vision changed architectural thinking in the 60s and 70s | Archigram 2

drawings emphasize precision, creativity, and the excitement of speculative architecture | Archigram 6

Archigram’s vision is rooted in exploring technological innovation and alternative futures | Archigram 8

Peter Cook recalls Archigram’s origins as a protest against the monotony of 1960s architecture | Archigram 9

Archigram’s influence continues to inspire bold explorations of architecture’s possibilities | Archigram 9½

project info:

name: Archigram 10
publisher: Circa Press | @circa.press

editor: Sir Peter Cook | @sirpetercook

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

The post archigram releases 10th architectural issue after 50 years, edited by sir peter cook appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

London-based Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP) has designed the new pieces for the Cities exhibition at the Richard Saltoun Gallery, inviting visitors to peek into the continuously evolving world of Sir Peter Cook, the visionary British architect and co-founder of the 60s avant-garde group, Archigram. Drawing on the architect’s work over the past six decades, the exhibition features a site-specific architectural environment and immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience produced especially for the gallery, together with a selection of drawings and paintings that trace his radical vision. Visitors are therefore ’embraced’ by a new ‘hybrid’, whereby interiors are created from deliberately drawn and image-loaded fragments to evoke reimagined and dismembered cities; cities that climb over themselves to become new forms. This extends a theme recently introduced into Cook’s exhibit at the Beijing Biennale, where drawings of an architectural composition move towards real scale.

Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of Archigram’s Living City show at the Insititute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), the Cities exhibition is ‘a continuous attempt to extend the vocabulary of my work,’ as Cook explained to designboom in a recent interview. 

installation view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 | © the artist

all images courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome 

sir peter cook’s exploration of a new architectural language

The journey at the Cities exhibition — designed by the British visionary’s studio, Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP) —  starts from an architectural moment, of the living wall from the world of Peter Cook as a portal. Richard Saltoun Gallery (see more here) gives us an overview of that experience: ‘The exhibition hits the eye as you enter and are almost ’embraced’ by a 2023 drawing that has been enlarged, cut, dismembered, and interwoven with elements from other drawings, as one of a series of improvisations on the possible components of cities, such as ‘inhabited wall’, ‘concealed building’, ‘layered space’, etc. Common to these are intersections of ‘capsules’, ‘skins’, partial megastructures.‘ The design of the exhibition eventually attempts to explore a hybrid architecture with drawn worlds — forming a unique interior view of the space to-scale that transcends viewers from distanced observers to participants. 

integrating a VR experience

an explosive meshing of fragments & colors, powered by VR

Columns and color blocks that act as partitions and directional paths are extracted from Peter Cook’s drawn works on a real-life scale, overlapping with, and invading the spatial sequence of the white-wall gallery, inviting Peter’s worlds into the real. The gallery’s corners are rendered softly by color patches shaped as reverse silhouettes of elements and artifacts. The hybrid integration of the drawn and real worlds is further enhanced by creatures and artifacts, experiences, and moments, open for interpretation: it is the essence of conglomeration, of confrontation of the unlike with the unlike, of the potential of unexpected mixtures. ‘I call it Cities because, in a way, all of the examples are fragments of cities — either reflecting upon known cities or suggestions of parts of cities,‘ Cook shared with designboom. 

color blocks that act as directional paths

In the main axis of the three galleries, one of the architect’s most popular drawings is activated by a Virtual Reality (VR) layer, probing visitors to ‘enter’ a speculative world. ‘So suddenly, the drawing, which was previously static, has some of its elements coming to life: they open up, they drift, then they move through the space,’ Cook told designboom. As for other exhibited works, many go as far back as the 70s, moving through the 80s and 90s, before concluding with a recent one from earlier this year. Some of these samples from different periods involve 

a ‘kind of mysterious conditions such as dreaming up spacious spacelessness. Some look at substance, alternative types of material from which we might make architecture. Some are actually projects for cities. All of them involve an observation of city form, really,’ the architect commented during the interview. 

Unlike his previous show at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, which displayed 120 items — big and small — the Cities show at Richard Saltoun Gallery reflects a more intimate scale, with about 20 works on show. This exhibition is running until September 16, 2023 at London’s Richard Saltoun Gallery.

the Cities exhibition displays about 20 works by Sir Peter Cook

image-loaded fragments: close-up shot

image-loaded fragments: close-up shot

Arcadia ‘C’ (1980s) and Gunge (1977)

the exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery will run until September 16, 2023

exhibition info:

name: Cities

artist/architect: Sir Peter Cook | @chap_platform

location: Richard Saltoun Gallery | @richardsaltoungallery, London 

running dates: July 19 – September 16, 2023

The post sir peter cook deconstructs his ‘cities’ in hybrid exhibition at london’s richard saltoun gallery appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Following last year’s expansive City Landscape exhibition at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, Sir Peter Cook returns with a new, immersive show at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London to mark his six-decade-long career. Drawing on his work over the past 60 years, the upcoming Cities exhibition features a site-specific architectural environment and immersive Virtual Reality experience produced especially for the gallery, together with a selection of drawings and paintings that trace his radical vision. Visitors are invited to have a ‘visual discussion’ about cities: cities reimagined and dismembered and cities climbing over themselves to become new forms. ‘This exhibition is a continuous attempt to extend the vocabulary of my work,’ Cook tells designboom in a recent interview, which you can read in full below.

The exhibition, which runs from July 19 to September 16, 2023, also coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Living City show at the Insititute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), held at that time on the same street as the Richard Saltoun Gallery. In Living City, Peter Cook, together with Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron, and Michael Webb – who later joined forces to found the celebrated neo-futurist group, Archigram – extolled the transience and serendipity of cities with hot images collaged into a three dimensional triangulated framework. Archigram brought forward radical ideas that have continued to inspire worldwide, including pioneers of high-tech architecture such as Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, and Rem Koolhaas.

All Wall (2023) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

all images courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery 

a 60-year legacy of avant-garde & neo-futuristic drawings 

Since the 1960s, Peter Cook has maintained an interest in the theoretical field of architecture and examining the future through the medium of drawing. By lifting the limitations of the physical world, drawing has freed him from the constraints of sites and economics,reinventing the look and function of cities through a range of unique, innovative designs. This becomes apparent in his ongoing series of works titled Arcadia, which he has produced continuously throughout his career. This project explores alternative suburbian lifestyles inspired by his English town upbringing. Another notable project of his  is the Plug-in City (also exhibited in ICA’s Living City). Developed between 1963 and 1966, these plans showed various iterations of prefabricated modular residences or ‘capsules’, modes of transportation, and other essential services that ‘plug in’ to one central hyper structure. In the 1970s these designs softened and started to involve layers and vegetation.

A tendency to mix and discover hybrids of natural conditions mixed with the mechanical and artificial accelerated through the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, the extension of the inherited architectural vocabulary has become a major preoccupation, exemplified by the artist’s series of ongoing architectural projects with the Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP). Read on as Sir Peter Cook describes and reflects on his upcoming Cities exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery, celebrating his ongoing pursuit of a new architectural vocabulary and imagery. 

Sunshine Village (2021) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

interview with sir peter cook 

designboom (DB): Walk us through the spatial experience of your upcoming Cities exhibition at Richard Saltoun Gallery and how Virtual Reality will come into play. 

Peter Cook (PC): The exhibition is in three rooms. And as you enter at a right angle from the main direction of the gallery, you will be confronted by a sort of full height and width of the room; you can’t actually walk right inside it, but it is something that almost embraces you. And it is derivative of one or two of my fairly recent drawings that explore what can be enclosed in a wall. In this instance, the wall is opened up and fragmented. This is a series of experiments we’re doing with some of my drawings in which the drawing is, to some extent, dismembered and then even integrated with dismembered versions of other drawings. This exhibition is a continuous attempt to extend the vocabulary of my work; I’m always trying to probe an extension of the architectural vocabulary. And I tried to turn this into another vocabulary, a pathway toward the making up of formal enclosures. So I’m trying to see if I’m able to produce things further in that direction until the actual enclosures become the drawing.

Sir Peter Cook talking with designboom from his London office | image © designboom

PC: Having engaged with that, we then turn to the main axis of the three galleries, where we have one of my most popular drawings, which has a virtual reality version of it; visitors can go ‘inside’ the drawing. So suddenly, the drawing, which was previously static, has some of its elements coming to life: they open up, they drift, then they move through the space. And then there are a series of drawings themselves spanning over quite a long period. We don’t show any large numbers of any particular period; we go back to the 70s and, in one case, through the 80s, the 90s, right up to earlier this year. They’re almost samples of different periods of my work, some involving kind of mysterious conditions such as dreaming up spacious spacelessness. Some look at substance, alternative types of material from which we might make architecture. Some are actually projects for cities. All of them involve an observation of city form, really. 

The city has been my canvas for a long time. And in that respect, there’s quite an interesting historical condition because, God help us, sixty years ago, before Archigram was called Archigram, I did an exhibition (Living City) with a series of friends who most of them became part of Archigram; it was at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, when it still had its premises across the street from the Saltoun gallery, before moving to a grander place. Similarly to this current exhibition, it was a construction that you walked inside. And it used a lot of graphics. I think my own graphics at that time were still relatively underdeveloped. I think that what I was drawing at that time had the embryons of my Plug-In City and so on. They were still fairly crude; they were still drawn in black and white, not in color. I didn’t have, I suppose, the technique I later developed at my disposal.

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

PC: And, of course, what I like to do is to constantly speculate. I have a drawing on the board right now that I’m doing, which is what I call Intrusive Landscape; it is the making of a kind of landscape and then showing all the different things that might pop out of the landscape, like tectonics coming out of it; that’s merely one thing that I returned to many times. And it will be interesting to see what correlation people can make between the large-scale drawings and the drawings in a frame. We are showing one or two quite large drawings; the gallery is not big enough to hold everything.  I did have a huge exhibition at the Louisiana Museum in Denmark last year, which showed 120 items — large, smaller, etc.. This current exhibition will be showing probably about 20 items, something of that order. And I think it will be a kind of sampling, a little bit leaning towards the stuff I’ve done in the last three years, but not entirely, and also some casting back. I call it Cities because, in a way, all of the examples are fragments of cities — either reflecting upon known cities, or suggestions of parts of cities.

I can’t help thinking my next exhibition should be my next building. And I’m very interested in the relationship between the drawing and what it is suggesting should happen. I’m always interested in it being like a soft way of introducing a radical architecture. I’m still, instinctively, a radical architect. I’m using the art space condition, meaning the gallery, in the same way that I would use publications many times to propagate the extension of the vocabulary of architecture a propos the city. That’s really my mission: to extend the vocabulary of architecture.

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

DB: Speaking of your next building, which speculative city of yours would you like to see actualized? 

PC: Funnily enough, I used the term Arcadia twice; I used it in the 70s. And just a few weeks ago, I completed a drawing called ‘Another Arcadia’, which is an idealized Garden City. It’s this sort of place where vegetation, gadgets, robots, and enclosures all mix together to create a hybrid. That’s something that has interested me for a very long time. So I would love to make a Garden City, one of my own period. I lived in many English cities as a child, as a son of an army officer; my favorite condition is a medium-sized city, not giant cities, because they’re tough to comprehend. I mean, I love Tokyo and Los Angeles and so on, but they are very complicated to summarize, whereas a small city can project the atmosphere of a small city — and I think I could design one. I had a few attempts in the past, but nobody has done.

Arcadia ‘B’ – the search for an ‘ideal Suburbia’ – continued (1977-78) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on card, 59 x 83 cm | © Peter Cook

DB: You mentioned the meshing of gadgets and vegetation. With new technologies pervading the world today, and based on your Plug-in City model, how do you envision Artificial Intelligence and AR/VR being plugged into future cities? 

PC: We are increasingly finding that there are smart devices built into fairly commonplace conditions. There are more and more bits and pieces of the known environment that respond and provide and don’t have to have all the cumbersome mechanics of human intervention. I’m one of many other architects that have been involved in Saudi Arabia’s NEOM City project. There, you have the proposition of a whole smart component where cars will not be necessary. One is thinking in three dimensions, and the three-dimensional city, I think, is a very interesting territory where you move diagonally through space. You may climb up quite high, and you don’t have to lay everything as a compass on the ground. But on the other hand, you don’t have to have just faceless slab blocks.

Arcadia ‘C’ – the search for an ‘ideal Suburbia’ – continued (1980s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on card, 59 x 73 cm | © Peter Cook

DB: While essentially futuristic, your body of work could allude to ancient architectural systems, with many of their techniques being revisited today. What are your thoughts on embedding ancestral designs into cities of tomorrow? 

PC: If my work does have a visual similarity to it, then I would slightly consider it a failure (laughs). I’m not a great lover of the antiques. When I was at school, I was quite good at history. I could write essays very easily. But I never really got interested till about the period of 1850 onwards, because that’s when the railways started to propagate. And I grew up knowing about railways; I know towns with railways, with gasworks, with trams, and trucks, and roads, and cranes. I’m not really interested in something that I feel I have no direct contact with. I was taken once to the Acropolis; I was giving a lecture in Athens, and a very important historian was to take me out there. While I was honored, I was also quite bored by it. I used to, as a child, on the other hand, insist on dragging my parents in England to see Roman remains as a phenomenon, and I used to go look at castles. I got out of that when I went to an architecture school at 16. I’d already read The Corbusier and was interested in modern architecture. I had to work on measured drawings of churches, tombs, neo-classical orders, etc. So I went backward. At 14, I was more of a modernist than I had to be at 17. You know, I don’t even like Victorian paintings or Victorian crafts, or old chairs.

My musical taste is a little bit backed on that, although I certainly veer more toward 20th century rather than 18th century music. I have a son who’s a music producer. He does very avant-garde music, and he’s more famous than me anyhow (laughs). I find some of his music a bit hard going; everybody has a limit. It could be argued whether I’m a 21st or 20th-century futurist; I would be willing to debate. If I take a really honest, intellectual position on it, I don’t go back beyond 1850 or 1900. That’s when it gets really interesting: the development of early airplanes, railways etc.. Really anything that I can see happening is interesting to me.

Arcadia ‘A’ (1977) | Print, 85 x 127 cm | © Peter Cook

DB: Could you elaborate on that last point? How has your drawing/creative process evolved over the years? 

PC: I can answer that by discussing what I’ve been working on today. I had this notion of a landscape that can absorb many, many artifacts. And so I’ve set it up on paper, slightly in perspective — looking down on the landscape. I set it as a kind of grid in perspective. And then I drew, in pencil, some peaks, tops of hills, with different heights. Some of the peaks are placed toward the edge and not at the center of the patch. That’s just a grid that allows me to move around. I start working on the notion of a series of hills and found that it has a valley condition. So I work on it.

The high points are usually celebrated with some constructed object; it may be playing with the surface, it may be playing with something poking up. But these tops will be marked and celebrated, each one in its own way. Then comes the intensification of something, a drift — I’m very interesting in drifts. And then I play with the surfaces, some of them obviously mechanical, containing strange objects, or having things poking out. Just yesterday, I drew a square patch with a few sticks or poles hanging, alluding to an anticipation of something being done. The implication is that there is a construction or constructed condition that’s going to happen.

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

PC: I’m also working on this notion of a high rise, like a castle, coming out of the forest. If we look at the UK, there is a need for expanded towns; this is a great demand for housing. There are many small towns in England inhabited by maybe 1,000 people, but then we sort of stick more people in these towns, creating a really dreary piece of suburbia. So I thought: why not grab the bull by the horns and put them all in the high rise and then put the high rise in the forest. Two places I often visit are Tel Aviv and Frankfurt; both are characterized by small towns with high rises surrounding them.

I did a drawing a couple of years ago on the subject; I’m now incorporating a piece of that into this landscape. One of the hills has high-rises coming out of the forest. And when we take the forest away, it’s a kind of statement; you suddenly reveal the hill below the forest. Ultimately, I’m using forests as one of the pieces of my vocabulary. I’m using rocks as another piece. I’m using what you do in a cutting, in a crevasse, as part of my vocabulary. I’m using what you do on the top of things as part of my vocabulary. I’m sort of recreating, in a way, a language of urbanization, except it’s not very urban.

Discreet City (2022) | ink, color, pencil, watercolor on paper | © Peter Cook

PC: Some drawings are more concentrated, like the one I did recently, called ‘All Wall’. The wall is quite complex, but it is a wall. This recent landscape drawing is rolling on; several conversations will be held together, and this means the objects drawn are fairly small scale. That’s because I’m trying to experiment with different things seen in juxtaposition. But I’m not entirely sure how the landscape will evolve. I have a vague idea; I will invent the program as I go along and say: ‘There could be too many trees here. Let’s reduce the trees; let’s make more of a valley; let’s look at crops, crevices, tops, patterns.‘ It’s like somebody who plays the piano, putting together a piece, which shows their dexterity in chord making, in fast finger movement, in counterpoint here, in tonality there. You do the exercises involved in a number of different demonstrations. Sometimes, though, the drawing takes over. It sort of tells you what it wants to be. And you drop that in the program. You just let it go. 

Filter Cities (2023) | VR | © Peter Cook

DB: Speaking of ‘All Wall’, this drawing depicts a wall surface containing chambers. It’s an interesting combination of systems of communications, vegetation, and open zones. What other architectural elements do you wish to explore further in your work? 

PC: There’s another drawing that I’m working on at home, which looks at corners. I’m very interested in corners, at when a surface turns. I think the Victorians were better at corners than we are. Modernists weren’t great at that. You know, modernism wanted consistency and cleanness, and then if you had to go around the corner, it sort of stopped then went around. The Victorians, and particularly northern Europe, were very good at that. If you go to Stockholm or Oslo, a bit toward Germany, they always mark a corner and make it look special. They celebrate the corner. It has a certain power that pops out first, and then you get the main body of the building. So in this new drawing, I contrive three corners. Again, I don’t really know how this will come together in the end; I have a vague idea, still.

Plug-in City (1970/2012) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on board, 79 x 164 cm | © Peter Cook

DB: How do you decide on the composition of your color palettes? Is there a particular emotion or impression that you wish to convey through your unique chromatic mix?

PC: My wife is also an architect and probably my best critic. She says that sometimes I lose the plot on the color and that my drawings looked better before they were colored. The coloring is sometimes a bit of a whim. Alongside the City exhibition, I also have six drawings hung up on a wall around the corner from the Royal Academy, which you can buy as prints. They’re some of my most popular works; it’s always surprising to find out which drawings become best sellers. It’s never the ones you think.

As for one of the popular ones this year, I still don’t quite like the coloring, but 13 people have already bought prints, maybe 20 by now — so somebody likes that color! It may have to do with other things going on in that drawing; I use a lot of airbrush on that one, and it’s sort of folding over. Bits of it will be recreated at the Saltoun Gallery as a big piece. But I’m a little bit surprised that the color, which I wouldn’t have used if I had to draw the piece again, seems to be popular. Richard Saltoun said himself that people don’t buy very much green, but I noticed that one my best sellers has a lot of green in it; it is a nice drawing, the prettiest one, almost too pretty. You know, after a while of completing a drawing, I can look back and say:’ That’s a bit gutsy, that’s a bit pretty, that’s a bit gloomy, that’s a bit provocative, that’s a bit problematic.’

Street of Secrets (2022) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

DB: While your work touches upon many themes, what do you think should be of primary concern for architects when building future urban spaces? 

PC: We can go back to my theme; the extension of the vocabulary. I think worldwide, there are about five or six sets of vocabularies. We have what we call here the new London vernacular, but you see the same thing in Germany or America. The steady, rectangular windows — the beige, gray buildings. Not really modernist nor revivalist — more like non-committal. Terrible stuff. Then you get people looking at traditional materials: sticks, wood, bamboo, and weaving them together. Then you get those Zaha Hadid-like, computer-generated surfaces, weaving, folding, based on artificial materials, concrete, and composites. In the north, you still get an amount of stick and panel architecture. And then, if you go to the Middle East, you have the typical stone and concrete systems, which, to be fair are sometimes made and built quite stylishly, but they’re still limited to stone and concrete. It seems like most people are afraid to venture outside a certain way of doing; they want to keep it very safe. But I think there’s much more architecture out there that people can explore. Sadly, many can’t be bothered or are apprehensive. They don’t want to take the risk; they don’t think the material will work; they say it’s too expensive. If you make windows in funny shapes, they’re always more expensive. But really, this is about architects being scared to try something new.

That’s why I like to go to Japan. Japanese are very good at combining all sorts of different things; they have a natural design sense. They enjoy play. As soon as you get to China, for example, it gets stiffer. In America, while some architects are really interesting, the majority are very careful and safe and predictable. They have amazing manufucaturing capabilities but they tend to stay very squared, including architecture students. It’s a terrible generalization, but that is my observation as a teacher. But there are places in the world where amazing things are happening, like Chile, Portugal, and Australia. So personally, I’m intrigued by eccentricity and projects that touch upon the eccentric — only as clues for what might be extensions of the vocabulary.

Gunge (1977) | color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 70 cm | © Peter Cook

project info:

exhibition name: Cities 

architect and interviewee: Sir Peter Cook | @sirpetercookatchap

location: Richard Saltoun Gallery | @richardsaltoungallery, London

running dates: July 19 – September 16, 2023

The post sir peter cook on his latest exhibition & 60-year quest to widen the vocabulary of the city appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

the japanese t-shirt company graniph recently launched a new series of long & short sleeve t-shirts that bear
archigram artwork. 9 different designs can be found on graniph’s site including these double sided tees.

archigram ♯17 (back)

archigram was a group of 6 english architects – peter cook, warren chalk, dennis crompton, david green,
ron herron and michael webb. they founded their collective in 1964 and instead of realising their ideas
as buildings they published their utopian city concepts in the magazine ‘archigram’. they crossed the
borders of pure architecture practice and influenced a number of cultural movements by expressing their
individual thoughts through graphics, collages, poems and experimental media until 1974.

archigram ♯15

archigram ♯16

some of the artwork used on the new graniph x archigram tees

more
graniph x archigram t-shirts
graniph: http://www.graniph.com
archigram: http://www.archigram.net
—
via monster munch

designboom interview: peter cook (2002)

designboom shop: t-shirts

The post archigram x graniph t shirts appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.