They have these lines on them so that they look as you revolve them but they are actually pulled. Like, as an example, I have to go soon after I finish with you guys across town and have a meeting in a building which was refurbished, and I know the guys who did it about 4 years ago and the door, the handles of the doors into the toilets are irritating because you cannot pull. And anything upwards from sticking the door in the right place!. Even sticking the bloody door in the right place is making life better. NOW, that doesn’t necessarily make it better in a REVOLUTIONARY sense or even in a UTOPIAN sense. You know I still believe that architecture CAN make people’s life better. PC: It was revolutionary in a sense of wanting life to be better, but not necessary having a political agenda to how better life could be. Z: But it was revolutionary! (referring to Archigram) During my time I was a scholarship funded kid that happened to be in a new school, and I didn’t think anything about it.

I was able to do so as a student on a county grant, just as I would have gone to the Woolwich Polytechnic. That I was to end up in the AA school at THAT time. I mean I am a product of socialised education. We weren’t Marxists! But we would vote Labour. And I think most of us in Archigram were socialists. Coming at it from a different angle than you expected, I am just working on a model there of a project which we have got to do in the University, which is a building for drawing, and I am again being very autobiographical, thinking of all sort of studios and buildings and students I taught since I have been in large barn like rooms and in the process of designing it, I think through social situations, now if I move the clock back to Archigram, I think we were very influenced by some of the architects of the early ‘20s particularly in Germany, particularly the people who revolved around Bruno Taut who were socialists. And I find that as I go on, certainly as a result I think of teaching, I find that I am more reflective upon people I know or circumstances I see that inform the architecture. I thought they had positive aspects and negative aspects.

And yes, there was another group, very regular, playing cricket and with suburban values.Īlready at the time I was very cynical about these six different types of people. And there was a part for romantic, escapist, dreamy and poetic people they lived in the marsh land and did fishing & hydroponic gardening. Another couple were sort of Mr & Mrs typical with a mini-car at the time of the common car with two children, the correct amount of children, wearing gum boots and trainers, just regular. Another couple were old retired Viennese with a lot of memories and culture. Another couple were glitzy, trendy, very superficial, hedonistic type. One couple were kind of tough, young malicious, New York types. In the arcadia project, I set it to six user types. But some of the activities going on in them would be known. When I did later a project called Arcadia which was in the 70’s it was very much based upon childhood, sort of taking the circumstances of my childhood and setting the building so that it could be a little different. PC: If there was a social program for most of the work done, I think it would not be very different from the day to day, what I would call North European Wet Liberalism.

at the time I was probably naive enough to not regard it as Utopian. How do you view the utopian visions of archigram during that specific moment of history in relation to the current realities of our cities and the recent political and social waves of change ? ZAWIA: It is perhaps difficult to discuss our next volume's theme - “utopia' - without first starting with archigram and the visions that came out of that period. In the following interview, which originally appeared in Zawia#01:Utopia (published December 2013), Sir Peter Cook, one of the brilliant minds behind Archigram, sits down with the editors of Zawia to discuss his thoughts on utopia - including why he felt the work of Archigram wasn’t particularly utopian (or even revolutionary) at all.

Young peter cook architect