Archigram - The Book / An Archigram Video

'It was intended as a poetic provocation to all the content of the architectural discourse...introducing words, music, drawings, film, fashion.' - Archigram

Architecture as...fantasy? As fantastical science-fictional buildings and cityscapes? But we've seen countless artistic visions of future cities in sci-fi magazines and on book covers...so what? But Archigram went further - they had the plans. 

Schemers and dreamers, yes, but Archigram drew, photographed and collaged their ideas and they can be seen in this book - The Book, the best and only book you need on these architectural theoreticians. Wait though, in case the idea of 'theory' puts you off, fear not, their schemes are such that they are a visual delight...

...a dash of situationism and a splash of Pop art sparked, to some degree, by the famous This Is Tomorrow exhibition...'Always definitively incomplete', as they say in the text accompanying the Nottingham shopping viaduct project. Incomplete echoes the idea of the disposable culture so many were discussing as manufacturing and materials showered the post-WW2 world with all manner of goods...an incomplete satisfaction, perhaps? The instantaneous consumer hit so quickly fading and needing to be found again and again. 

Yet Archigram were no socialist, utopian idealists against shallow consumerism, Like so many Pop artists they cast enthusiastic eyes over the array of products, from film to pulp fiction and domestic goods and were inspired. The Book even contains a pop-up page...

...or should that be Pop-up?

Archigram seemed to exist on the cool outer edges of Swinging London's hot epicentre....outsiders looking in and visualising what they saw, or rather, offering an alternate vision because despite all that was happening in London during the 60s the collective was able to somehow mirror, without directly engaging in, The Scene. Such is my impression, although it's quite possible some of them were in contact with the scenesters.

The final photo may 'say it all' in terms of Cool sophistication combined with Pop domestic products. A living city survival kit indeed! Note the inclusion of both Ornette Coleman and Coltrane. Sunglasses, a gun, a pack of cigarettes and, of course, a copy of Playboy. All that a penthouse-dwelling urbanite needs to survive. This urbane hipster would, however, be living in an Archigram-designed pod in a mobile city.

Finally, I found this fantastic short film, made in 1967 and perfectly capturing the spirit of Archigram and the times...

 

Book: Royal Festival Hall - The Official Record

Published in 1951, hardcover. Just look at these illustrations! Living in London, it's easy to take the Royal Festival Hall for granted. This book, however, serves to remind us of how 'frankly contemporary' (as it says in the foreword) the architecture was. Like the Festival of Britain two years earlier, the book testifies to the modernist boost tired old Britain got after the traumas of a world war, from attention to detail in acoustics to the seating design. A fascinating book.

Living City Survival Kit (Archigram) / London cool / Man In The City (colllage) /Ornette Coleman

Looking through a book on  Art in the Sixties I saw this again. Not this exact picture, but a version of it. This, culled from online, looks like it might be the original, though. Seems it was created by Warren Chalk as part of the Living City exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1963. Every time I come across it I think 'Yes!', so right. Cigarettes, Playboy, whisky, shades and two Jazz albums. It pretty much sums up the birth of the Cool in London. OK, whether Chalk thought he was laying out all that was Cool, I don't know. Pop Art? Definitely. No ordinary Map of Cool would include sweets and a packet of Daz. A design for living. What could be better than sipping a whisky, smoking and listening to Ornette Coleman whilst flicking through the latest Playboy? Eh? The fact that Coleman features instead of, say, the Modern Jazz Quartet or Miles Davis proves Chalk was thinking outside instead of opting for the obvious. It's 'cool' beyond conventional cool into the realms of the avant-garde where those who knew 'got' it.  

As much as I love it, I hate it. I'm envious! Pathetic, I know. To be 18 in London in '63....the clothes, music, Art - yeah, yeah, we all know. You could smoke in bars! You could...you could...ah, forget it.

Some kids would envy me being 18 when Punk happened and 15 when Funk was at it's peak. You never know you're living through what will be someone else's dream era. As good as Punk was, unlike the early-60s, it was also about nihilism, destruction, anger, frustration etc. I'd rather have been part of something far more positive, an era when the working classes were breaking into all the arts and employment figures were high.

Just to link the city theme, here's one I made a few years ago.

RTomens, 2018

Space Age Architecture - Archigram 4, 1964 /Sun Ra Rocket Number Nine

From the Pop(?) Artitectural collective Archigram's magazine which, in retrospect, looks very much like a combination of underground zine and Independent Group literature. Here's the Zoom contemplation of sci-fi comic book architecture. The Archigram archive is here. 

 

Collage for Le Monde Diplomatique / Holiday: The Big Stink & The Bar Bookshop

 

Well, we didn't make it to France this year...but my art did! An editor for Le Monde Diplomatique contacted me a few weeks back, wanting to use a collage, Situation Normal, for the September issue. And so it came to pass. The original post is here if you want to see the collage more clearly.

So we went to the Kent coast instead, Birchington-on-Sea, to be precise - it stinks - literally! Massed banks of seaweed on the beach sent their briny stench right up into town. Not the normal seaweed smell, which we all like, don't we? But a real, deep pong - ha-ha! - oh how we laughed, once we got used to it and having done so it became the smell of 'home' for a week.

Whilst bravely revisiting Broadstairs (scene of an horrific seagull attack in which I was injured by its claw as it whisked my croissant up into the blue yonder!) I found Museum Without Walls by Jonathan Meades for 50p in a charity shop. In the Introduction he writes: 'Everything is fantastical if you stare at it for long enough, everything is interesting. There is no such thing as a boring place.' I bore that in mind as I looked along the cliff tops at what is essentially suburbia-on-sea in the form of Birchington's boring houses. It's well-placed for train travel, though.

I discovered the The Chapel in Broadstairs. Yes, a pub and bookshop combined. The guy behind the bar explained to me that trying to keep them categorised was impossible since, having had a few drinks, people just put them anywhere. I didn't find anything of interest, except the concept itself. I don't drink much, these days, but I do get intoxicated by a great book.

This building was close to where we stayed. I walked past it every day when going for a morning coffee. It struck me the first time as interesting, then grew with each encounter until I fell in love with it's austere modernism.

So it came time to say farewell to the sea. We took our bikes and enjoyed the path that runs for miles around the Kent coast.