Archigram

Archigram was an avant-garde group which was set up in the 1960s and led by Sir Peter Cook. The name archigram came from a word play of ‘architecture’ and ‘telegram’. Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and David Greene were also part of the group. They drew inspiration from technology and the future to create hypothetical projects that were a new form of reality. They wanted to reduce the effects of modernism with its simple and safe ideas.

A famous project was ‘Plug-in-City’ which was designed between 1960-74.It was an aggregate of of a series of smaller projects and ideas during the first few years. It was a fantasy city which contained residential units split into modules that could be movable using giant cranes. They were plugged into a central infrastructural mega machine that created a megastructure. Cook wrote ‘it was then inevitable that we should investigate what happens if the whole urban environment can be programmed and structured for change.’ Issues of economic, environmental and social sustainability are the underlying philosophy behind Plug-In City.

Archigram designed nomadic alternatives to traditional ways of living, including wearable houses and walking cities—mobile, flexible, impermanent architecture that they hoped would be liberating.

Plug-In-City

Brutalism

Brutalism was an architectural movement in the 1960s and 1970s. It was led by Le Corbusier in Europe, with the main followers in Britain being Alison and Peter Smithson. After the Second World War, Governments across Europe were searching for designers (mainly modernists) to be given the task of rebuilding a physically shattered country and to help change social aspects through the construction of a cradle-to-grave welfare state. Brutalist buildings were often made from concrete and heavy-looking materials. They had rough unfinished surfaces, were unusual shapes, massive forms and small windows in relation to other parts. The Smithsons demanded a return to a more rigid, formal architecture and put their ideas to work with their Secondary School in Hunstanton, Norfolk, completed in 1954. They wanted to show off the materials they were using and left many exposed, such as steel and glass. This was an anti-aesthetic approach, but the Smithsons believed in the ‘honest approach’. They followed Reyner Banham’s definitions of Brutalism;

1. Building as a unified visual image, clear and memorable
2. Clear exhibition of structure
3. A high valuation of raw untreated materials

Reynar Banham described the movements aims which were to “make the whole conception of the building plain and comprehensible. No mystery, no romanticism, no obscurities about function and circulation.”

An example of the Smithson’s work is The Robin Hood Gardens.

Robin Hood Gardens (1968-72) by Peter and Alison Smithson

References;

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/797?locale=en

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/heritage/brutalism