‘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.

Pavilions are architecture’s fast, experimental structures that test ideas long before they scale up to cities. This year’s highlights push that spirit further, blurring the lines between sculpture, shelter, ritual space, and ecological device. From bamboo vaults rising in flood-prone villages to inflatable dream temples, from wind-driven feather structures on remote islands to LEGO-built playscapes in London, the pavilion becomes a tool for storytelling.

Across the ten projects, a set of shared themes emerges: material reinvention, circular design, and a renewed focus on community. Bread waste becomes structure, bamboo becomes climate infrastructure, and woven rattan becomes a water-harvesting system. Some pavilions introduce new behaviors, gathering, dreaming, resting, learning, while others revive old rituals like bathing or communal reading. What ties them together is their willingness to ask what a temporary space can do, and how it can shift our relationship to place, resources, and each other. Here are ten pavilions reshaping how we think about space.

LINA GHOTMEH’S EXPO PAVILION TAKES GOLD IN OSAKA

image courtesy of Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture

Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture designs the Bahrain Pavilion for Expo 2025 Osaka, crafting a timber-and-aluminum structure inspired by the nation’s traditional dhow boats and its long maritime history. Positioned along the waterfront in the Expo’s Empowering Lives zone, the pavilion bridges Bahraini boat-building heritage with Japanese wood craftsmanship, expressing cultural exchange through material and form. The structure reinterprets millennia-old construction techniques with a lightweight wooden frame, an aluminum outer layer, and passive cooling strategies that reduce mechanical energy use.

Designed for disassembly and reuse after the Expo, the pavilion embodies Bahrain’s commitment to sustainability and craft-driven innovation. The structure received the Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape in the Self-Built category, recognizing Ghotmeh’s precise, contextual approach and the pavilion’s refined expression of Bahrain’s cultural and environmental heritage.

read more here

SIR PETER COOK’S LEGO PLAY PAVILION FOR THE SERPENTINE

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) | images courtesy of Serpentine; photos by Andy Stagg, unless stated otherwise

Serpentine and the LEGO Group’s Play Pavilion by Sir Peter Cook, installed in London’s Kensington Gardens, is a bright, bowl-shaped structure wrapped in orange and animated with LEGO-built topographies. The exterior walls of the pavilion rise and dip like a shifting landscape, inviting visitors to touch the tactile brick formations before stepping inside.

Sunlight filters through gaps between the roof and base, filling the interior with natural light while maintaining a breezy, open feel. A towering central pillar, assembled from LEGO bricks, anchors the space like a watchful robotic figure. Visitors are encouraged to play, build, and modify the pavilion in real time through an interactive brick wall and a trove of LEGO pieces. Multiple openings frame views of the garden, while a yellow slide offers a playful exit route.

read more here

SIX-SEAT FOREST BAR PAVILION BY ELMGREEN & DRAGSET 

images by Andrea Rossetti, courtesy of Khao Yai Art

Elmgreen & Dragset unveil K-BAR, a six-seat cocktail pavilion tucked deep within Thailand’s Khao Yai Art Forest, inserting an urban typology into a remote natural setting. Appearing most days as a charcoal-gray sculptural object amid dense foliage, the pavilion occasionally comes to life: visitors arriving at the right moment are guided through the forest to find the bar glowing from within.

Inside, stainless steel surfaces, dark wood, red leather stools, terrazzo flooring, and a backlit display channel the intimacy of classic metropolitan bars. A permanently installed 1996 painting by Martin Kippenberger, visible even when the bar is closed, anchors the installation, paying homage to the artist’s legacy and echoing Elmgreen & Dragset’s long-standing interest in ‘denials,’ functional forms that resist predictable use.

Open only once a month, K-BAR plays with visibility, access, and displacement, placing a European artwork in a Southeast Asian forest as a subtle inversion of museum repatriation debates. As part of the newly launched Khao Yai Art Forest, the pavilion underscores the initiative’s mission to merge contemporary art with ecological immersion, offering an unexpected moment of encounter in one of Thailand’s most pristine environments.

read more here 

LEOPOLD BANCHINI INSTALLS TIMBER BATHHOUSE IN SPAIN

image by Gregori Civera

Leopold Banchini Architects installs Round About Baths at the Concéntrico Festival in Logroño, Spain, transforming the center of a traffic roundabout into a temporary public bathhouse. The circular timber structure reclaims an overlooked urban void, introducing cold-water basins, steam rooms, and changing areas that revive the communal spirit of historic public baths.

Built with a standard timber frame and clad in uncut wooden panels intended for reuse, the pavilion emphasizes material efficiency and circularity. High perimeter walls provide privacy while clearly marking the intervention within the car-dominated landscape, prompting visitors to reconsider how urban land is allocated and who it serves. By situating a shared bathing environment at the heart of a vehicular crossroads, Round About Baths challenges conventional urban hierarchies and highlights the potential of underutilized spaces. Once dismantled, the site returns to its previous state, but the project leaves behind a conceptual proposal.

read more here 

TOGUNA WORLD’S NOMADIC PAVILION LANDS IN ATHENS

all images courtesy of Toguna World

Toguna World’s immersive nomadic pavilion, The Sanctuary of Dreams, combines film, ritual, and collective storytelling within an inflatable structure presented as part of Plásmata 3 | We’ve met before, haven’t we? in Athens. Rooted in African philosophies of cyclical time and ancestral memory, the space invites visitors to enter barefoot and step into a meditative environment where a 44-minute, three-channel art film brings together animation, collage, soundscapes, and archival textures.

After the screening, participants join a guided reflection circle, contributing their visions to The Global Mapping of Dreams, a growing archive of future imaginaries from across Africa and its diaspora. Designed by Pierre-Christophe Gam, the pavilion functions as a contemporary ritual space, featuring dimmable lighting, scent, modular cushions, and spatial audio that shape an intimate environment for collective visioning. 

read more here

MERO STUDIOS BUILDS A PAVILION FROM 780 LEFTOVER BAGUETTES

all images by Paul Kozlowski

MERO Studios builds Paysage de Pain, a public pavilion made from 780 salvaged baguettes, turning surplus bread into a tactile, aromatic structure within the courtyard of Montpellier’s Hôtel de Lunas. Developed with the nonprofit Pain de L’Espoir, the installation reframes food waste as a spatial material, highlighting the staggering amount of unsold bread discarded daily in France.

Visitors move through warm, dough-scented walls that crack and age under the sun, transforming the pavilion into a living metaphor for nourishment, excess, and decay. Through its texture, smell, and temporal fragility, Paysage de Pain becomes a sensory monument to resourcefulness.

read more here

FEATHER-BLADE SEASIDE PAVILION SWAYS ON CHAISHAN ISLAND 

image by Liang Wenjun

GN Architects’ Seaside Pavilion brings new life to the abandoned pier of Chaishan Island, introducing a wind-driven structure whose long white blades sway gently above the water. Designed as part of the Hello, Island revitalization initiative, the pavilion acts as a symbolic arrival point, a contemporary echo of traditional village entrances where large trees once anchored community gatherings.

Suspended from a prefabricated steel frame, 36 seven-meter blades move with the sea breeze, creating a rhythmic, feather-like choreography that mirrors the quiet landscape of the island. The installation repurposes the old cargo pier into a resting and meeting place for the elderly residents. Built with corrosion-resistant materials and high-strength fishing ropes for durability, the pavilion balances engineering precision with a sense of lightness. Its movement shifts from subtle to visible depending on the wind, transforming the site into a landmark that reconnects Chaishan’s past, present, and future through motion and placemaking.

read more here

MARINA TABASSUM’S 2025 SERPENTINE PAVILION OPENS IN LONDON

Serpentine Pavilion 2025 A Capsule in Time, designed by Marina Tabassum, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). exterior view. © Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) | image by Iwan Baan, courtesy of Serpentine

Marina Tabassum Architects’ A Capsule in Time was the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, a modular timber structure that explores impermanence, light, and temporality within London’s Kensington Gardens. Composed of four translucent capsules aligned with Serpentine South’s historic bell tower, the pavilion filters daylight into shifting patterns, echoing the hydrologic landscapes of Bangladesh, where land continually forms, dissolves, and reappears.

A kinetic capsule allows sections of the pavilion to expand for public programs, while a ginkgo tree anchors the interior as a living symbol of resilience. Built entirely from wood and translucent polycarbonate, materials chosen for their reuse potential, the project embraces dry construction and adaptability, ensuring the pavilion continues its life beyond the summer season. Integrated bookshelves house a curated selection of texts spanning Bengali literature, ecology, and identity, including works banned in Bangladesh. Tabassum frames the pavilion as a place of quiet resistance and shared knowledge, offering a contemplative environment where ideas can circulate freely. 

read more here 

BAMBOO PAVILION ANCHORS YASMEEN LARI’S PONO VILLAGE

all images courtesy of Nyami Studio

Nyami Studio and Jack Rankin complete the Juliet Center in Sindh, Pakistan, a bamboo pavilion that anchors Yasmeen Lari’s zero-carbon Pono Village, a prototype community built in response to the devastating 2022 floods. The lightweight vaulted structure is shaped from bamboo, mud, lime, and thatch, translating vernacular forms into a modular, climate-resilient space designed for communal use. The pavilion offers an open, flexible environment for workshops, gatherings, and training programs, supporting Lari’s mission to empower local residents, particularly women, through hands-on construction and craft skills.

Two interlocking vaults span widely without internal columns, creating a breathable interior that can be adapted or expanded as the village evolves. Built using a combination of digital precision and traditional techniques, the project demonstrates how low-carbon materials can achieve structural complexity and durability in extreme climates. Hand-made mud tiles line the floor, and a woven thatch roof of locally harvested grass provides protection from heat and monsoon rains. 

read more here 

RAD+AR BUILDS WOVEN-BAMBOO CHICKEN COOP IN JAKARTA 

images courtesy of RAD+ar

RAD+ar designs the Chicken Hero Pavilion in Urban Forest Jakarta, carving a low, hill-like form into the landscape to house an educational chicken coop disguised as part of the terrain. The pavilion merges ecological performance with community engagement, inviting visitors through a tunnel-like opening into a space that promotes backyard poultry farming as a sustainable household practice. Inside, reclaimed bamboo forms a ventilated, daylight-filled structure optimized for animal comfort and waste management.

The pavilion processes organic waste from nearby restaurants, turning leaves and food scraps into compost and closing the loop by distributing fresh eggs daily, a live demonstration of a micro circular economy. As a temporary installation, the project functions both as a prototype for low-impact chicken coops and as a public learning space. It addresses Indonesia’s significant food waste challenges while breaking stigmas around small-scale poultry keeping. Blending into the park’s topography, the Chicken Hero Pavilion shows how simple construction and local materials can support inclusive education, environmental stewardship, and community-led sustainability.

read more here 

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Serpentine and the LEGO Group unveil the Play Pavilion designed by Sir Peter Cook in London’s Kensington Gardens. The public art project coincides with World Play Day on June 11th, 2025, and rightfully so with the playful and vibrant flair of the pavilion. It is on view from June 11th to August 10th, 2025. The only orange on the horizon, the Play Pavilion by Sir Peter Cook partially comes to life with the use of LEGO bricks. Outside, these colorful blocks create protruding, tactile installations resembling topography. A kaleidoscopic roof shaped like a small bowl cocoons the architecture, colored in orange to match the similar shade of the base. Around the pavilion, the walls have slopes and peaks, mimicking the waves crashing onto the shore while creating different openings and exits. 

Anyone can run their hands along them and feel the LEGO-brick installations on the walls before they step inside the Play Pavilion. Here, sunlight passes through the openings because Sir Peter Cook didn’t join the roofing to the base. Air and light, then, flow in and out, and people can see the outside from inside. The use of LEGO bricks continues inside. The central pillar is reminiscent of a towering robot, a quiet sentry that surveys the space to check if everyone’s enjoying their time. To exit the structure, visitors can either walk towards one of the openings or use the yellow slide on the other side. On one of the walls, there’s a brick-built board and a treasure of LEGO blocks just below it, so visitors can pick up pieces, pin them onto the interactive structure, and shape them into how they want them to be. It’s the essence of the LEGO-built Play Pavilion, an intentional design by Sir Peter Cook.

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) | images courtesy of Serpentine; photos by Andy Stagg, unless stated otherwise

live activations throughout the summer of 2025

Sir Peter Cook describes the Play Pavilion with LEGO brick designs as a piece of theater, but the structure can recall the form of an observatory, too. From afar, the geometric roof already announces the presence of the orange playground. As visitors walk up closer to it, they then see the partly obscured body that completes it. In a location full of greenery, the Play Pavilion breathes in a refreshed life, luring in the visitors to come closer and find out more within. In the words of the architect, ‘a child might pop out on a slide, another may crawl through a hole on the ground, mystifying conventional entrance routes. Another mouth-shaped opening reveals an orator, performer, or singer entertaining eavesdroppers beyond.’

The LEGO-built Play Pavilion by Sir Peter Cook continues the series of programs presented by Serpentine. In 2022, Serpentine, the London Lions Basketball Club, and artist Alvaro Barrington partnered with CONSUL, Tower Hamlets Council, and Weavers Adventure Playground in Bethnal Green to create a basketball court. Today, it’s an orange pavilion that doubles as public art, with walls that present a series of tactile installations. For the gallery, these new initiatives bring together artists, designers, architects, and creatives to champion the spirit of play and community. The LEGO-built Play Pavilion by Sir Peter Cook is a platform for live activations throughout the summer of 2025.

view of the slide at the pavilion

the roof has a geometric design and a similar shade of the base

the walls present a series of tactile installations

inside, there’s a board where visitors can pin the LEGO bricks

portrait of Sir Peter Cook | photo by Gary Summers

Sir Peter Cook designs the pavilion commission for Serpentine and the LEGO Group | photo by Gary Summers

project info:

name: Play Pavilion

architect: Sir Peter Cook | @sirpetercook

team: Pablo Wheldon, Cong Ding

program: Serpentine Galleries | @serpentineuk

collaborator: LEGO Group | @lego

on view: June 11th to August 10th, 2025

The post serpentine unveils the LEGO-built play pavilion by sir peter cook in london appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Never one to shy away from the unexpected, the architectural provocateur Sir Peter Cook is teaming up with Serpentine and the LEGO Group to bring the Play Pavilion to London’s Kensington Gardens. The project is designed as an immersive, riotous celebration of fun, one of architecture’s most under-appreciated function. Set to be unveiled on June 11th, 2025 — World Play Day — the new pavilion will pop with color, form, and irreverence to prove that play, like good design, thrives on risk and curiosity.

Peter Cook’s pavilion will be a theatrical performance in Kensington Gardens. With its colorful gestures, it appears to have hatched from an anarchic sketchbook. ‘The Play Pavilion is a piece of theatre,’ says Cook. ‘From a distance, intriguing shapes rise from within the structure… A child might pop out on a slide, another may crawl through a hole on the ground.’

It’s less a static structure and more a living cartoon — teasing, hiding, revealing. Through pierced and scooped walls, visitors can glimpse flashes of activity inside and echoes of laughter. It invites Brits and tourists alike to embrace the strange.

the pavilions celebrates architecture as a space for fun | visualizations courtesy Serpentine Galleries

serpentine galleries and lego transcend the White Cube

By teaming with architect Sir Peter Cook and LEGO Group, Serpentine expands its reach beyond the gallery’s clean-lined walls and into the messier, livelier reality of the park. ‘We are thrilled to be collaborating with the LEGO Group… to realise the vision for play we all share with Peter Cook,’ said Serpentine’s Chief Executive Bettina Korek and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist in a joint statement. ‘Zaha Hadid long envisioned a collaboration between Serpentine and Peter Cook… Now, that vision is becoming a reality.’ In this playful detour, architecture escapes the exhibition and becomes a real-world encounter, situated directly in Kensington Gardens.

The LEGO Group’s involvement is more than decorative. LEGO bricks form a key material in the pavilion’s composition, turning the familiar building block into a full-scale architectural gesture. ‘Play is not just a source of joy; it fosters connection and encourages exploration,’ said Julia Goldin, Chief Product and Marketing Officer at the LEGO Group. Indeed, the Play Pavilion becomes a tactile and communal space, where visitors are drawn into a three-dimensional celebration of imagination — something Cook has long championed.

Peter Cook describes the structure as a piece of theater designed to intrigue

a continuation of legendary Radical Design

As a founding member of Archigram, Sir Peter Cook famously redrew the boundaries of architectural possibility. With speculative projects like Plug-In City, he and his peers imagined flexible, kinetic cities built on modular systems and social ideals. While many of Archigram’s ideas remained unbuilt, Cook’s influence has been profound. The Play Pavilion nods to that legacy — transforming fantastical forms into lived experience. It joins a growing list of realized works by Cook, including Kunsthaus Graz in Austria and the Drawing Studio at Arts University Bournemouth. And yet, this project might be his most accessible to date. It’s a democratic monument to fun and unpredictability.

Throughout the summer, the Play Pavilion will host live activations from performances to public programs. Visitors will be invited to engage not just with the architecture, but with each other. Peter Cook sums it up best: ‘Play transcends survival, achievement, and common sense.’ In a world often over-engineered for efficiency, the Play Pavilion is radical. Visitors are challenged to waste time well. Whether you’re crawling through a mouth-shaped opening or simply eavesdropping on a hidden orator, you’re part of the performance.

LEGO bricks are incorporated into the design to highlight the power of play and collaboration

Peter Cook, portrait © Paul McLaughlin

 

 

 

 

 

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project info:

name: Play Pavilion

architect: Sir Peter Cook | @sirpetercook

program: Serpentine Galleries | @serpentineuk

collaborator: LEGO Group | @lego

on view: June 11th — August 10th, 2025

visualizations: courtesy Serpentine Galleries

The post serpentine taps sir peter cook and LEGO for radical ‘play pavilion’ in london 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.

as part of city landscapes — a solo exhibition on british avant-garde architect sir peter cook’s work —denmark’s louisiana museum has released a video titled screw you; it can be build. set within the architect’s london studio in january, the conversation between cook and marc-christoph wagner highlights the possible benefits of drawing by hand.

‘because I was not a natural drawer, I realized that I was determined to communicate ideas,’ says sir peter cook on the video. ‘I was arrogant enough to say: ‘I’m sorry, I’m not just going to sit at the back of the process and specify door handles; I’m going to be a creative architect.’ and so, you just bloody well had to do it like an artisan.’

screenshots taken from the video by louisiana channel

PETER COOK, ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ARCHITECTS OF OUR TIME

with his avante-garde theory and vision, now on display at louisiana museum of modern art (see here) — peter cook has made his mark as one of the most important architects of our time. his work as an architect lives mainly in drawings while the number of built projects, one being kunsthaus graz in austria, is less extensive. visions of the future are most clearly expressed and can best be discussed in drawings, cook contends. paper provides an ideal opportunity to shake up conventional notions of cities and life forms, free from the demands and obligations of concrete solutions and materials.

on the video, sir peter cook begins by saying there were two main reasons that drew him to architecture: ‘one was that my mother had been a frustrated artist… and the other thing was my father was an army officer who had contrived to stay in england… and I was taken as a little tiny kid to see grand houses which the army were then taking for paratroops and tanks. and then there was a very particular thing which was we often had tea or had to visit places and there would be an inevitable sort of hotel which would have an etching of the town… and I was fascinated by these usually horizontal engravings with the houses and church, and the castle… and I began to draw… and I would invent towns and somehow start to put more modern architecture.’

according to cook, the exhibited drawings can be seen as notes to architectural themes that have mattered to him. each is a collage of ideas and methods; attempts to communicate about architecture through drawing. the drawing technique has always grown out of the overall idea of ​​the project. all exhibited drawings are part of cook’s own collection, and the texts describing the drawings in the exhibition are written by cook himself.

the video continues with cook explaining why he disagrees with critics calling his architectural ideas utopian: ‘by the critics and the regular people saying it’s utopian, you put it into a pigeonhole that says: ‘oh, those sorts of architects are utopian, but we are normal architects.’ so, the delight I get out of doing buildings is to say: screw you, it can be build.’

video info:

camera: kyle stevenson
edited by: jarl therkelsen kaldan
produced by: marc-christoph wagner
copyright: louisiana museum of modern art, 2021

The post sir peter cook discusses the benefits of drawing by hand appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

denmark’s louisiana museum of modern art celebrates its 2022 opening with a first exhibition presenting the british avant-garde architect sir peter cook. the museum has opened tuesday, january 18th, while the peter cook exhibition ‘city landscapes’ will debut on friday, january 21st until may 8th, 2022 as part of the series ‘louisiana on paper.’ the upcoming show featuring drawings by peter cook marks the first of the series showcasing drawings by an architect. the exhibition shows how cook, with drawing as his most important tool, over six decades has influenced and inspired architecture with his visionary ideas about new cities and life forms.

images courtesy louisiana museum of modern art

peter cook at denmark’s louisiana museum of modern art

with his avante-garde theory and vision, now on display at louisiana museum of modern art (see here) — peter cook has made his mark as one of the most important architects of our time. his work as an architect lives mainly in drawings while the number of built projects, one being kunsthaus graz in austria, is less extensive. visions of the future are most clearly expressed and can best be discussed in drawings, cook contends. paper provides an ideal opportunity to shake up conventional notions of cities and life forms, free from the demands and obligations of concrete solutions and materials. 

peter cook, city landscapes, filter city, 2020 | © peter cook

the exhibition themes

the louisiana museum of modern art structures its ‘city landscapes’ exhibition chronologically, interrupted only by the theme ‘towers,’ which is a building typology peter cook has returned to over the years. with offers for reconstruction of existing skyscrapers as well as more utopian towers, named after places he has stayed in for longer periods — oslo towers, santa monica hotel and são paulo tower. his most recent drawings from the period 2010-21 lead the narrative all the way to the present.

according to cook, the exhibited drawings can be seen as notes to architectural themes that have mattered to him. each is a collage of ideas and methods; attempts to communicate about architecture through drawing. the drawing technique has always grown out of the overall idea of ​​the project. all exhibited drawings are part of cook’s own collection, and the texts describing the drawings in the exhibition are written by cook himself.

peter cook, city landscapes, outcrop house, 2018 | © peter cook

provocative and organic spaces

looking closely at the seemingly complex jumble of his drawings, the viewer discovers spaces, building elements and people inhabiting the organic landscapes and everything is rendered precisely and to scale. the template is often a black and white original, which is copied onto, for example, watercolor paper, and subsequently colored with watercolor, pencil or gouache.

cook’s drawings should be seen as projects — proposals for new ways of shaping and inhabiting cities. this is a recurring feature in his work, going all the way back to the 1960s and 1970s when as founder of the neo-futurist architectural group archigram he and the other members of the group devised new and provocative ways of envisioning the city of the future. in drawings and collages, archigram introduced concepts like plug-in-city, walking city and instant city. a major voice in architectural innovation and debate, cook and the rest of the group sowed seeds that have grown into outstanding buildings.

peter cook, city landscapes, urban retreat, 2018 | © peter cook
peter cook, city landscapes, crazy city, 2008 | © peter cook
peter cook, city landscapes, inhabited wall, 2020 | © peter cook
peter cook, city landscapes, island city, 2011-12 | © peter cook

peter cook, city landscapes, são paulo tower, 2000s | © peter cook

peter cook, city landscapes, academy of the hill, 1979 | © peter cook

exhibition info:

exhibition title: city landscapes

artist: peter cook

location: louisiana museum of modern art, humlebæk, denmark

dates: january 21st, 2022 — may 8th, 2022

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