Archigram 10 – ADC

Archigram, the influential collective of architectural provocateurs, has reassembled to launch its first publication in half a century. Archigram 10, edited by founding member Peter Cook and published by Circa Press, marks a significant moment in the group’s history. This latest edition builds on the legacy of the original nine issues (plus the 1974 half-issue, Archigram 9½), which upended conventional architectural thought with a bold embrace of technology, consumer culture, and Pop Art sensibilities.

The new publication arrives amid a radically different architectural landscape but retains the irreverent and speculative spirit that made its predecessors so influential.

Contributors include Archigram members Dennis Crompton, David Greene, and Michael Webb, as well as a diverse range of architects and critics spanning generations and continents. Established figures such as Hitoshi Abe, Odile Decq, and Thom Mayne share pages with younger voices whose careers began decades after the group’s initial heyday.

Founded in London in 1960, Archigram was born from dissatisfaction with the dreariness of post-war architecture. Inspired by emerging technologies and the zeitgeist of 1960s Pop Art, the group’s fantastical proposals for mobile, modular, and machine-like buildings captured imaginations and shaped the trajectory of contemporary design. The projects ranged from walking cities to plug-in megastructures, challenging the boundaries of architectural practice and expanding the possibilities of what buildings could be.

The new publication, created with support from electronics company ABB, channels this ethos into contemporary discourse. Pedro Pina of PG Howlin Studio, who worked on the design of Archigram 10, describes the aim as capturing “the spirit, dynamism, and audacity” of the original issues. The result is a journal that not only revisits past provocations but also situates them within today’s context of digital tools and ecological imperatives.

Peter Cook’s editorial reflects on the enduring relevance of drawing as a medium for architectural speculation:

“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.”

True to this belief, the pages of Archigram 10 are filled with vivid visual explorations, combining intricate technical renderings with playful, speculative imagery.

While Archigram 10 looks to the future, it is deeply rooted in the group’s history of experimentation. The contributors bring fresh perspectives that draw on both technological advances and natural systems.

At its core, Archigram 10 aims to reaffirm the group’s commitment to imagining architecture beyond the confines of tradition, looking to challenge practitioners to rethink the limits of their discipline, just as the group did over half a century ago. For Cook and his collaborators, the act of re-engaging with these ideas is as much a protest against the status quo as it is a celebration of innovation.

By revisiting the radical ideas of the past and pairing them with contemporary voices, Archigram 10 offers both a critique of current architectural practices and a blueprint for what might come next. It is, as it always was, an invitation to think differently.

Archigram 10

Circa Press, £25