Archigram The Book_

ARCHIGRAM THE GROUP

CONTENTS

Photographed 1963 and 1987

6.

8.

10.

12.

13.

14.

18.

26.

27.

Warren CHALK 1927-87 Born: London Educated: Manchester College of Art

Peter COOK 1936Born: Southend-on-Sea Educated: Bournemouth School of Art and the Architectural Association

Dennis CROMPTON 1935Born: Blackpool Educated: Manchester University School of Architecture

David GREENE 1935Born: Nottingham Educated: Nottingham University School of Architecture

Ron HERRON 1930-1994 Born: London Educated: Brixton School of Building and Regent Street Polytechnic

Michael WEBB 1937Born: Henley-on-Thames Educated: Regent Street Polytechnic

Those who prefer the parking lot to hypersurface

We like to imagine that Archigram is for...

Those who think a traffic jam is a temporary city.

Butterfly brains Keeping your brain like an exposed nerve he said

We like to imagine that Archigram is for...

Dreamers and slackers Workers for the beauty of ideas

this is all a rather long way round of saying to you lets live in the dewired planet and so please turn on your mobiles...if John Cage thought the coughing of the audience was as much a part of the performance as the pianist then who am I to deny that the singing of a hundred mobiles isn’t pure poetry?

DG

Prisoners in the revolving door between the room called doubt and the one named belief The slaves who work for the small triumphs of reality You can roll a piece of steel any length

David GREENE

Warren CHALK

Peter COOK

Michael WEBB

4

Ron HERRON

Dennis CROMPTON

NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION, Michael Sorkin ARCHIGRAM THE MAGAZINE, Peter Cook ARCHIGRAM 1 Mosque, David Greene Piccadilly Circus Competition, Peter Cook + Gordon Sainsbury Furniture Manufacturers Building, Michael Webb

28.

30.

34.

35.

ARCHIGRAM 2 Gas House, Peter Cook + David Greene Metal Cabin Housing, Peter Cook Spray Plastic House, David Greene Lillington Street Housing, Warren Chalk + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Sin Centre, Michael Webb Seaside Entertainment Building, David Greene South Bank Development, Warren Chalk + Ron Herron + Dennis Crompton

36.

40.

42.

56.

58.

60.

62.

ARCHIGRAM 3 Nottingham Shopping Viaduct, Peter Cook + David Greene Living City Exhibition, Whole Archigram Group City Interchange, Warren Chalk + Ron Herron Come-Go Project, Peter Cook City Synthesiser, Dennis Crompton Dream City, David Greene + Michael Webb

66.

76.

78.

82.

84.

90.

ARCHIGRAM 4 Entertainments Tower, Warren Chalk + Peter Cook + Ron Herron Montreal Tower, Peter Cook House Project, David Greene Plug-In City, Peter Cook Capsule Homes, Warren Chalk

92.

THE PLUG-IN CITY, Priscilla Chapman

94.

101.

102.

104.

110.

112.

120.

134.

136.

ARCHIGRAM 5 Underwater City, Warren Chalk City Mound, Peter Cook Auto-Environment, Michael Webb Computer City, Dennis Crompton Walking City, Ron Herron ARCHIGRAM 6 Cardiff Air House, Ron Herron Plug-In University, Peter Cook

140.

A CLIP-ON ARCHITECTURE, Reyner Banham

144.

156.

164.

170.

172.

ARCHIGRAM 7 Living Pod, David Greene Paddington East, Peter Cook Freetime Node, Ron Herron Archigram 1967

182.

195.

196.

ARCHIGRAM 8 We Offer Ten Prefabricated Sets, David Greene Milanogram, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron

200.

203.

204.

206.

208.

209.

212.

218.

220.

228.

229.

230.

232.

236.

238.

240.

242.

244.

246.

256.

258.

259.

260.

5

Control and Choice, Peter Cook Weekend Telegraph 1990 House, Warren Chalk + Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Cushicle and Suitaloon, Michael Webb Ideas Circus, Peter Cook Oasis, Ron Herron Instant Village, Peter Cook ARCHIGRAM 9 Instant City Children’s Primer, David Greene Instant City, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Oslogram, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton Cheek By Jowl, Peter Cook Dreams Come True, Michael Webb L.A.W.U.N. Project Number 1, David Greene Room of 1000 Delights, Peter Cook Enviro-Pill + Holographic Scene Setter, Ron Herron Osaka, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton Tuned Suburb, Ron Herron Bathamatic, Warren Chalk Features Monte Carlo, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton _ David Greene + Ron Herron Manzak, Ron Herron Info-Gonks, Peter Cook Brünnhilde’s Magic Ring of Fire, Michael Webb ARCHIGRAM OPERA

264.

DEATH BY ARCHITECTURE, Martin Pawley

266.

267.

268.

272.

274.

It’s A..., Ron Herron Addhox, Peter Cook Bournemouth Steps, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Sporting d’Ete – Cameleon, Peter Cook Sporting d’Ete – Palm Tree, Warren Chalk + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron

278.

281.

282.

284.

286.

287.

288.

290.

292.

294.

ARCHIGRAM 91⁄2 Expro, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Tuning London, Ron Herron Prepared Landscape, Peter Cook Calverton End, Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Cranbourne Court, Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Suburban Sets, Ron Herron Malaysia Exhibition, Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron House of the Seven Veils, Peter Cook Bumps and Lumps, Peter Cook

296.

IN MEMORIUM ARCHIGRAM Peter Cook

300.

Credits and Acknowledgments

ARCHIGRAM THE GROUP

CONTENTS

Photographed 1963 and 1987

6.

8.

10.

12.

13.

14.

18.

26.

27.

Warren CHALK 1927-87 Born: London Educated: Manchester College of Art

Peter COOK 1936Born: Southend-on-Sea Educated: Bournemouth School of Art and the Architectural Association

Dennis CROMPTON 1935Born: Blackpool Educated: Manchester University School of Architecture

David GREENE 1935Born: Nottingham Educated: Nottingham University School of Architecture

Ron HERRON 1930-1994 Born: London Educated: Brixton School of Building and Regent Street Polytechnic

Michael WEBB 1937Born: Henley-on-Thames Educated: Regent Street Polytechnic

Those who prefer the parking lot to hypersurface

We like to imagine that Archigram is for...

Those who think a traffic jam is a temporary city.

Butterfly brains Keeping your brain like an exposed nerve he said

We like to imagine that Archigram is for...

Dreamers and slackers Workers for the beauty of ideas

this is all a rather long way round of saying to you lets live in the dewired planet and so please turn on your mobiles...if John Cage thought the coughing of the audience was as much a part of the performance as the pianist then who am I to deny that the singing of a hundred mobiles isn’t pure poetry?

DG

Prisoners in the revolving door between the room called doubt and the one named belief The slaves who work for the small triumphs of reality You can roll a piece of steel any length

David GREENE

Warren CHALK

Peter COOK

Michael WEBB

4

Ron HERRON

Dennis CROMPTON

NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION, Michael Sorkin ARCHIGRAM THE MAGAZINE, Peter Cook ARCHIGRAM 1 Mosque, David Greene Piccadilly Circus Competition, Peter Cook + Gordon Sainsbury Furniture Manufacturers Building, Michael Webb

28.

30.

34.

35.

ARCHIGRAM 2 Gas House, Peter Cook + David Greene Metal Cabin Housing, Peter Cook Spray Plastic House, David Greene Lillington Street Housing, Warren Chalk + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Sin Centre, Michael Webb Seaside Entertainment Building, David Greene South Bank Development, Warren Chalk + Ron Herron + Dennis Crompton

36.

40.

42.

56.

58.

60.

62.

ARCHIGRAM 3 Nottingham Shopping Viaduct, Peter Cook + David Greene Living City Exhibition, Whole Archigram Group City Interchange, Warren Chalk + Ron Herron Come-Go Project, Peter Cook City Synthesiser, Dennis Crompton Dream City, David Greene + Michael Webb

66.

76.

78.

82.

84.

90.

ARCHIGRAM 4 Entertainments Tower, Warren Chalk + Peter Cook + Ron Herron Montreal Tower, Peter Cook House Project, David Greene Plug-In City, Peter Cook Capsule Homes, Warren Chalk

92.

THE PLUG-IN CITY, Priscilla Chapman

94.

101.

102.

104.

110.

112.

120.

134.

136.

ARCHIGRAM 5 Underwater City, Warren Chalk City Mound, Peter Cook Auto-Environment, Michael Webb Computer City, Dennis Crompton Walking City, Ron Herron ARCHIGRAM 6 Cardiff Air House, Ron Herron Plug-In University, Peter Cook

140.

A CLIP-ON ARCHITECTURE, Reyner Banham

144.

156.

164.

170.

172.

ARCHIGRAM 7 Living Pod, David Greene Paddington East, Peter Cook Freetime Node, Ron Herron Archigram 1967

182.

195.

196.

ARCHIGRAM 8 We Offer Ten Prefabricated Sets, David Greene Milanogram, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron

200.

203.

204.

206.

208.

209.

212.

218.

220.

228.

229.

230.

232.

236.

238.

240.

242.

244.

246.

256.

258.

259.

260.

5

Control and Choice, Peter Cook Weekend Telegraph 1990 House, Warren Chalk + Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Cushicle and Suitaloon, Michael Webb Ideas Circus, Peter Cook Oasis, Ron Herron Instant Village, Peter Cook ARCHIGRAM 9 Instant City Children’s Primer, David Greene Instant City, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Oslogram, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton Cheek By Jowl, Peter Cook Dreams Come True, Michael Webb L.A.W.U.N. Project Number 1, David Greene Room of 1000 Delights, Peter Cook Enviro-Pill + Holographic Scene Setter, Ron Herron Osaka, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton Tuned Suburb, Ron Herron Bathamatic, Warren Chalk Features Monte Carlo, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton _ David Greene + Ron Herron Manzak, Ron Herron Info-Gonks, Peter Cook Brünnhilde’s Magic Ring of Fire, Michael Webb ARCHIGRAM OPERA

264.

DEATH BY ARCHITECTURE, Martin Pawley

266.

267.

268.

272.

274.

It’s A..., Ron Herron Addhox, Peter Cook Bournemouth Steps, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Sporting d’Ete – Cameleon, Peter Cook Sporting d’Ete – Palm Tree, Warren Chalk + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron

278.

281.

282.

284.

286.

287.

288.

290.

292.

294.

ARCHIGRAM 91⁄2 Expro, Peter Cook + Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Tuning London, Ron Herron Prepared Landscape, Peter Cook Calverton End, Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Cranbourne Court, Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron Suburban Sets, Ron Herron Malaysia Exhibition, Dennis Crompton + Ron Herron House of the Seven Veils, Peter Cook Bumps and Lumps, Peter Cook

296.

IN MEMORIUM ARCHIGRAM Peter Cook

300.

Credits and Acknowledgments

May 1961

Archigram 1 ARCHIecture–TeleGRAM How was it then? – 25, Gloucester Place – James Cubitt – an architect who never went on site – Stefan Burgas, Hungarian – The elegant tasteful interiors – Fello Atkinson.

So there it was in a basement fuelled by the odour of a dyeline print machine that P. Cook and D. Greene found themselves at neighbouring wooden drawing boards.

Two provincial boys, one from the Seaside, the other from the Midlands, one confident and energetic, sociable, brilliant draughtsman, the other doubt ridden, slothful and too shy. However a strange unspoken synergy between these two. A shared suburban upbringing producing a shared anger, a shared desire to escape the conventions of a derelict modernism, a shared belief that a new generation of young architects who were challenging the status-quo were being denied a voice.

So there it was. “Hey David, isn’t this great?” “Yes Peter, but look at this.”

So it was, at 59 Aberdare Gardens, Archigram came into, could I say, being.

Appropriately in a suburban street, shrubbery everywhere, gentle and quiet.

Perhaps gentleness and quiet are the best incubators of anger, of a desire to breath out. Anyway Peter, as I remember it, at the Fish Restaurant, it was pleasure not anger we sought, an opposition to the dreary repetitious mantras of modernism.

Form follows function, no it doesn’t it follows idea, it follows a desire for architecture to be cheerful.

Archigramers trained in the traditional way, so pragmatic. Screw the theory see my drawings! Let our ideas infect your brain. So it was, admiring the building under construction not the finished thing! Wanting architecture to be something pure, unsettling, technically aspiring, beautiful strange, annoying, temporary.

Then the others, I don’t remember how it grew, was it Euston? I remember going to a party in Highgate, Mike living in a garden shed (nice shed) leaving a bottle of whisky in a gully and it disappearing but why was I there? Were you? So many refugees from Dorset? Strange.

Then Warren (his amazing record collection and sound system) Dennis, Ron, how did it all accrue into Archigram?

Does it matter, somehow there it was, Nottingham, London, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Henley, Manchester this geographical porridge, diverse ages, locations, but all having a relentless education in the reality, the practical domain of architecture is that it?

A disperse family of personalities so diverse that fusion might have seemed impossible.

Was it ever fusion, perhaps not but a strange love affair?

So much shared, so much in common, yet so little, yet? As in all love affairs there was an unspoken understanding, I show you this image and I know you will smile with a visable approval.

There it was and what, 50 years later?

DG

May 1961

Archigram 1 ARCHIecture–TeleGRAM How was it then? – 25, Gloucester Place – James Cubitt – an architect who never went on site – Stefan Burgas, Hungarian – The elegant tasteful interiors – Fello Atkinson.

So there it was in a basement fuelled by the odour of a dyeline print machine that P. Cook and D. Greene found themselves at neighbouring wooden drawing boards.

Two provincial boys, one from the Seaside, the other from the Midlands, one confident and energetic, sociable, brilliant draughtsman, the other doubt ridden, slothful and too shy. However a strange unspoken synergy between these two. A shared suburban upbringing producing a shared anger, a shared desire to escape the conventions of a derelict modernism, a shared belief that a new generation of young architects who were challenging the status-quo were being denied a voice.

So there it was. “Hey David, isn’t this great?” “Yes Peter, but look at this.”

So it was, at 59 Aberdare Gardens, Archigram came into, could I say, being.

Appropriately in a suburban street, shrubbery everywhere, gentle and quiet.

Perhaps gentleness and quiet are the best incubators of anger, of a desire to breath out. Anyway Peter, as I remember it, at the Fish Restaurant, it was pleasure not anger we sought, an opposition to the dreary repetitious mantras of modernism.

Form follows function, no it doesn’t it follows idea, it follows a desire for architecture to be cheerful.

Archigramers trained in the traditional way, so pragmatic. Screw the theory see my drawings! Let our ideas infect your brain. So it was, admiring the building under construction not the finished thing! Wanting architecture to be something pure, unsettling, technically aspiring, beautiful strange, annoying, temporary.

Then the others, I don’t remember how it grew, was it Euston? I remember going to a party in Highgate, Mike living in a garden shed (nice shed) leaving a bottle of whisky in a gully and it disappearing but why was I there? Were you? So many refugees from Dorset? Strange.

Then Warren (his amazing record collection and sound system) Dennis, Ron, how did it all accrue into Archigram?

Does it matter, somehow there it was, Nottingham, London, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Henley, Manchester this geographical porridge, diverse ages, locations, but all having a relentless education in the reality, the practical domain of architecture is that it?

A disperse family of personalities so diverse that fusion might have seemed impossible.

Was it ever fusion, perhaps not but a strange love affair?

So much shared, so much in common, yet so little, yet? As in all love affairs there was an unspoken understanding, I show you this image and I know you will smile with a visable approval.

There it was and what, 50 years later?

DG

David GREENE 1958

Peter COOK + Gordon SAINSBURY 1960

MOSQUE

PICCADILLY CIRCUS COMPETITION

In 1959 the city of Baghdad did not carry the intense narrative that it does today. I chose it as a location because I knew that, like myself, none of the teaching staff had been there. At that time there was only one mosque in England – in Woking, Surrey. Previously I had seen some very beautiful black-and-white photographs of Baghdad. Some were taken from the air and very clearly showed an extraordinary pattern of streets, alleys, roads, houses and courtyards. Within this patchwork that ran down to the banks of the Tigris there was a gap, a large empty space. I made it my site – a good place to build a mosque – and found all the relevant climatic information.

At the same time I had been asked to submit a topic for my diploma thesis and I was intent on finding the simplest functional brief that I could. I was intrigued by the mosque as a type because as far as I could judge the liturgical requirements were minimal. There are only six main elements to such a building: the maksura (prayer room), the mihrab (a niche or impression of a door sunk in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca), the minaret, the liwan (an arcaded entrance courtyard), the mida-a (a fountain and pool for washing) and the min bar (the pulpit from which the chapters of the Coran are read). I added a madresha (a school adjoined to a mosque).

These facts about the building's function allowed a reduction of the project to as unfettered an exploration of shape as possible. That way I could not be criticised for errors of plan arrangement or omissions of rooms, but only on the basis of shape, surface and structure. It was this latter aspect of the project that formed the method (for better or worse) which I scrupulously followed in all subsequent work.

Structure, in this context, was meant to include conceptual structure, particularly with reference to technology, materials and technique.

The technical origins of the mosque are not remarkable. They rely heavily on the ferro cement methods developed by Pier Luigi Nervi. But unlike his structures, which often employed the prefabrication of curved parts, the mosque was intended to present a continuous surface of complex curves: the uninterrupted skin of modernism. Unbeknown to me, Mike Webb was making his Furniture Manufacturers' Association Headquarters in High Wycombe using the same methods of fabrication.

It would be possible to develop in this scribbling the historical origins of the structural diagrams, which were a careful re-presentation of the gothic section wrapped around itself into a hyper-baroque object blurring wall-vault-ceilingfloor-land into a continuous flow. I saw it as the style that was to exceed the manic feats of late gothic structure. It was a superperpendicular-hyperbaroque building in its utter reliance on str:ucture for its effects.

Some paintings of the outside by Lottie Spearpoint and the original model have been lost.

12

13

David GREENE 1958

Peter COOK + Gordon SAINSBURY 1960

MOSQUE

PICCADILLY CIRCUS COMPETITION

In 1959 the city of Baghdad did not carry the intense narrative that it does today. I chose it as a location because I knew that, like myself, none of the teaching staff had been there. At that time there was only one mosque in England – in Woking, Surrey. Previously I had seen some very beautiful black-and-white photographs of Baghdad. Some were taken from the air and very clearly showed an extraordinary pattern of streets, alleys, roads, houses and courtyards. Within this patchwork that ran down to the banks of the Tigris there was a gap, a large empty space. I made it my site – a good place to build a mosque – and found all the relevant climatic information.

At the same time I had been asked to submit a topic for my diploma thesis and I was intent on finding the simplest functional brief that I could. I was intrigued by the mosque as a type because as far as I could judge the liturgical requirements were minimal. There are only six main elements to such a building: the maksura (prayer room), the mihrab (a niche or impression of a door sunk in the wall to indicate the direction of Mecca), the minaret, the liwan (an arcaded entrance courtyard), the mida-a (a fountain and pool for washing) and the min bar (the pulpit from which the chapters of the Coran are read). I added a madresha (a school adjoined to a mosque).

These facts about the building's function allowed a reduction of the project to as unfettered an exploration of shape as possible. That way I could not be criticised for errors of plan arrangement or omissions of rooms, but only on the basis of shape, surface and structure. It was this latter aspect of the project that formed the method (for better or worse) which I scrupulously followed in all subsequent work.

Structure, in this context, was meant to include conceptual structure, particularly with reference to technology, materials and technique.

The technical origins of the mosque are not remarkable. They rely heavily on the ferro cement methods developed by Pier Luigi Nervi. But unlike his structures, which often employed the prefabrication of curved parts, the mosque was intended to present a continuous surface of complex curves: the uninterrupted skin of modernism. Unbeknown to me, Mike Webb was making his Furniture Manufacturers' Association Headquarters in High Wycombe using the same methods of fabrication.

It would be possible to develop in this scribbling the historical origins of the structural diagrams, which were a careful re-presentation of the gothic section wrapped around itself into a hyper-baroque object blurring wall-vault-ceilingfloor-land into a continuous flow. I saw it as the style that was to exceed the manic feats of late gothic structure. It was a superperpendicular-hyperbaroque building in its utter reliance on str:ucture for its effects.

Some paintings of the outside by Lottie Spearpoint and the original model have been lost.

12

13

The possible elimination of the post and beam frame is tried out in these two sketches. With the frame now gone the staircase and lift towers must now perforce hold the building up.

The top sketch is a horizontal secrion through the lettable office space at the top of the building: and the lower a horizontal section through the lecture theatre/screening room on the left, the conference room in the middle and executive offices on the right.

I responded4 years later with an oil painting where those same rude words are now carefully measured, even foreshortened to the top and bottom of each letter to suggest the curved surfaces to which they are applied. Depicted are the stair and lift towers, and the lecture theatre now recast as a screening room. The monster, now minus its sceleton, must rely on those towers to hold itself up. In addition, the screening room, now accessed by tubes, must be cantilvered off the towers in a feat of engineering only possible on paper or, as in this case, prepared board. To stabilize the screening room structure post tensioning wires are added, evoking, hopefully, the appearance of a gypsy moth nest.

4. As a group our modus operandi was to make drawings that would invite a drawn response from the others. Drawing becomes a sort of conversation.

The possible elimination of the post and beam frame is tried out in these two sketches. With the frame now gone the staircase and lift towers must now perforce hold the building up.

The top sketch is a horizontal secrion through the lettable office space at the top of the building: and the lower a horizontal section through the lecture theatre/screening room on the left, the conference room in the middle and executive offices on the right.

I responded4 years later with an oil painting where those same rude words are now carefully measured, even foreshortened to the top and bottom of each letter to suggest the curved surfaces to which they are applied. Depicted are the stair and lift towers, and the lecture theatre now recast as a screening room. The monster, now minus its sceleton, must rely on those towers to hold itself up. In addition, the screening room, now accessed by tubes, must be cantilvered off the towers in a feat of engineering only possible on paper or, as in this case, prepared board. To stabilize the screening room structure post tensioning wires are added, evoking, hopefully, the appearance of a gypsy moth nest.

4. As a group our modus operandi was to make drawings that would invite a drawn response from the others. Drawing becomes a sort of conversation.

Archigram 2

May 1962

18

19

Archigram 2

May 1962

18

19

22

22

METAL CABIN HOUSING

GAS HOUSE

Peter COOK 1962

Peter COOK + David GREENE 1961

SPRAY PLASTIC HOUSE David Greene 1962

Why don’t rabbits dig rectangular burrows?

Why didn’t early man make rectangular caves?

Supposition: Architect … Client wanting singlestorey house in the landscape.

26

Phase 1, Burrows … Purchase foamed polystyrene block 40ft by 40ft by 15ft and suitable burrowing tools, eg electric hedge-cutter, blowlamp. Block placed on site, burrowing commences, kids carving out playroom, etc, parents carving rest. Architects advising.

27

Phase 2, Dissolve … House burrow completed.

Enter burrow with plastic and fibreglass spray machinery, (with client) spray burrow under supervision of plastics engineer. Client chooses regions of surfaces to be transparent or translucent, the spray mixture alters accordingly.

Phase 3, Completion … Shell entered by architect and service consultants and client. Client decides upon regions of lighting, wall, floor, heating, sinks, power points.

METAL CABIN HOUSING

GAS HOUSE

Peter COOK 1962

Peter COOK + David GREENE 1961

SPRAY PLASTIC HOUSE David Greene 1962

Why don’t rabbits dig rectangular burrows?

Why didn’t early man make rectangular caves?

Supposition: Architect … Client wanting singlestorey house in the landscape.

26

Phase 1, Burrows … Purchase foamed polystyrene block 40ft by 40ft by 15ft and suitable burrowing tools, eg electric hedge-cutter, blowlamp. Block placed on site, burrowing commences, kids carving out playroom, etc, parents carving rest. Architects advising.

27

Phase 2, Dissolve … House burrow completed.

Enter burrow with plastic and fibreglass spray machinery, (with client) spray burrow under supervision of plastics engineer. Client chooses regions of surfaces to be transparent or translucent, the spray mixture alters accordingly.

Phase 3, Completion … Shell entered by architect and service consultants and client. Client decides upon regions of lighting, wall, floor, heating, sinks, power points.

SIN CENTRE

An Entertainments Palace for Leister Square, London Michael WEBB 1961

Thoughts on writing a requested article comparing the Palaces Fun and Sin.

design whereby a given caterpillar track can convey its riders in both directions.

The design was the result of the structural and spatial demands of these two circulatory systems. The aforementioned floor spaces mediated between them.

The case could be made that they are an example of Lebbeus Woods’ ‘free space’. Space without descriptive labels.

In art seldom does the remake surpass the original. In the case, though, of an article entitled ‘Sin Centres and Fun Palaces’ written by a one Priscilla Chapman in 1964, the task appears not insurmountable. After all, fully forty six years separate the words you are now reading from the Times article ... fifty if I don't write faster … and forty eight years since two contemporaneous but seemingly unrelated events transpired: Cedric meets Joan Littlewood at a party where she explains to him her ideas for a new type of theatre. And, in a more central part of London, Michael learns that he has failed his thesis at the Regent Street Polytechnic … for the second time.

I felt it important that the car ramps flowed seamlessly into the decks upon which these phantom accommodations were supposed to happen. This meant that the decks needed themselves to be ramped using compound curves ... making inhospitable hosts for watching Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8. The building did not move; neither did it change its shape. It could be likened unto a jet airliner without a fuselage sitting on the runway. In fact, the inspiration, if you can call it that, for the shiny aluminium decks came directly from critical wing design; from sitting just behind the wing and watching that glorious moment of touch down when the flaps were fully down and the spoilers up.

But those intervening years become themselves a kind of temporal dimension; time enough for the observer to have moved to a point more equidistant between the two palaces, for the callow and insecure youth who once bore my name is as much a stranger to me now as was the witty, brilliant and seemingly mature Cedric. Well, maybe ... at the same time I still remember the sense of elation induced by the design seeming to develop as if unguided by me, yet nevertheless cloaking itself in certain things that quickened the blood … like polished aluminium jet airliner wings. Such joy could never be experienced when the design is from another’s hand; with a colleague’s work one can only feeI jealousy if brilliant and disdain if indifferent.

THE FUN PALACE It, by contrast, eschewed the notion of entrance as an architectural conceit altogether ... no entrance hall, no ticket counter, and no for heaven's sake foyer, reminding you, as if you needed reminding, that you are better than the Great Unwashed on the wrong side of the plate glass. You just walk in pretty much wherever you feel like.

But back to Priscilla: her original intent had been to do three pages with illustrations on the Sin Centre. However, at the last minute there appeared on the scene a new suitor with slicked down black hair and golden tongue and whispering sweet nothings in her ear; charming her with words like expendability, impermanence and flexibility. The Sin Centre, by contrast, had not been considered by its author to be expendable, although if ever built, it would have rapidly become so; neither was it impermanent or flexible. And so the two projects appeared together, though not uncomfortable bedfellows. Both were shiny metallic structures with no raw concrete in sight. It was this Sunday Times article that made their respective authors aware of each other’s work; though not once when the authors met was the subject of the Palaces Fun and Sin mentioned. Never did Michael learn what Cedric thought of the Sin Palace. In neither of them was the word, or rather the drawing, made flesh i.e. neither got built. Just as well, some would say and indeed have said. Nevertheless Cedric went to extraordinary lengths to get the Fun Palace built, involving even the support of leading politicians in the cause. For Michael, though, no such thought crossed his mind; it was, after all, just a thesis.

The city would, then, flow in and out of the building. In terms of more exactly matching the concept to the actuality, the building would no longer be a must visit one off masterpiece, but something that tuned up its surroundings but was hardly separate from them. To Cedric the ‘artist’s impression’, usually an aerial perspective of a proposed new building, and showing it as if bathed in ethereal light in contrast to the greyness of its surroundings, was symptomatic of an attitude that had led to the worst excesses of Messrs. Koolhaas, Libeskind, Mayne et al. and not forgetting Madame Hadid. Cedric, would, I think, view these latter as deeply conservative. Their creations may quicken the blood, but restore their walls to the vertical, strip away the perforated stainless steel skin (Master Mayne) and you are left with a conventional box housing a standard plan arrangement.

MW * the article by Priscilla Chapman appearing in the London Sunday Times colour supplement entitled ‘Sin Centres and Fun Palaces’.

September 6th. 1964.

THE SIN CENTRE The first thing you will notice about the Sin Centre, or Entertainments Centre as it was initially called, is that it lacks entertainments. Pore over the plans, but you will find no drawn lines suggesting the presence of a bowling alley, or a restaurant or even a theatre. I forgot all about minor concerns like the brief while in pursuit of this notion of a design exclusively derived from the ecstasy of driving of a car at high speed around and up through a building; or, if a pedestrian, of negotiating escalators built like amusement park rides that used a mechanically dubious

Initial proposal consisting of a giant triangulated advertising frame with programmatic elements suspended within the frame, appearing here as white blobs. Parking was limited to a plinth like structure at the base.

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SIN CENTRE

An Entertainments Palace for Leister Square, London Michael WEBB 1961

Thoughts on writing a requested article comparing the Palaces Fun and Sin.

design whereby a given caterpillar track can convey its riders in both directions.

The design was the result of the structural and spatial demands of these two circulatory systems. The aforementioned floor spaces mediated between them.

The case could be made that they are an example of Lebbeus Woods’ ‘free space’. Space without descriptive labels.

In art seldom does the remake surpass the original. In the case, though, of an article entitled ‘Sin Centres and Fun Palaces’ written by a one Priscilla Chapman in 1964, the task appears not insurmountable. After all, fully forty six years separate the words you are now reading from the Times article ... fifty if I don't write faster … and forty eight years since two contemporaneous but seemingly unrelated events transpired: Cedric meets Joan Littlewood at a party where she explains to him her ideas for a new type of theatre. And, in a more central part of London, Michael learns that he has failed his thesis at the Regent Street Polytechnic … for the second time.

I felt it important that the car ramps flowed seamlessly into the decks upon which these phantom accommodations were supposed to happen. This meant that the decks needed themselves to be ramped using compound curves ... making inhospitable hosts for watching Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8. The building did not move; neither did it change its shape. It could be likened unto a jet airliner without a fuselage sitting on the runway. In fact, the inspiration, if you can call it that, for the shiny aluminium decks came directly from critical wing design; from sitting just behind the wing and watching that glorious moment of touch down when the flaps were fully down and the spoilers up.

But those intervening years become themselves a kind of temporal dimension; time enough for the observer to have moved to a point more equidistant between the two palaces, for the callow and insecure youth who once bore my name is as much a stranger to me now as was the witty, brilliant and seemingly mature Cedric. Well, maybe ... at the same time I still remember the sense of elation induced by the design seeming to develop as if unguided by me, yet nevertheless cloaking itself in certain things that quickened the blood … like polished aluminium jet airliner wings. Such joy could never be experienced when the design is from another’s hand; with a colleague’s work one can only feeI jealousy if brilliant and disdain if indifferent.

THE FUN PALACE It, by contrast, eschewed the notion of entrance as an architectural conceit altogether ... no entrance hall, no ticket counter, and no for heaven's sake foyer, reminding you, as if you needed reminding, that you are better than the Great Unwashed on the wrong side of the plate glass. You just walk in pretty much wherever you feel like.

But back to Priscilla: her original intent had been to do three pages with illustrations on the Sin Centre. However, at the last minute there appeared on the scene a new suitor with slicked down black hair and golden tongue and whispering sweet nothings in her ear; charming her with words like expendability, impermanence and flexibility. The Sin Centre, by contrast, had not been considered by its author to be expendable, although if ever built, it would have rapidly become so; neither was it impermanent or flexible. And so the two projects appeared together, though not uncomfortable bedfellows. Both were shiny metallic structures with no raw concrete in sight. It was this Sunday Times article that made their respective authors aware of each other’s work; though not once when the authors met was the subject of the Palaces Fun and Sin mentioned. Never did Michael learn what Cedric thought of the Sin Palace. In neither of them was the word, or rather the drawing, made flesh i.e. neither got built. Just as well, some would say and indeed have said. Nevertheless Cedric went to extraordinary lengths to get the Fun Palace built, involving even the support of leading politicians in the cause. For Michael, though, no such thought crossed his mind; it was, after all, just a thesis.

The city would, then, flow in and out of the building. In terms of more exactly matching the concept to the actuality, the building would no longer be a must visit one off masterpiece, but something that tuned up its surroundings but was hardly separate from them. To Cedric the ‘artist’s impression’, usually an aerial perspective of a proposed new building, and showing it as if bathed in ethereal light in contrast to the greyness of its surroundings, was symptomatic of an attitude that had led to the worst excesses of Messrs. Koolhaas, Libeskind, Mayne et al. and not forgetting Madame Hadid. Cedric, would, I think, view these latter as deeply conservative. Their creations may quicken the blood, but restore their walls to the vertical, strip away the perforated stainless steel skin (Master Mayne) and you are left with a conventional box housing a standard plan arrangement.

MW * the article by Priscilla Chapman appearing in the London Sunday Times colour supplement entitled ‘Sin Centres and Fun Palaces’.

September 6th. 1964.

THE SIN CENTRE The first thing you will notice about the Sin Centre, or Entertainments Centre as it was initially called, is that it lacks entertainments. Pore over the plans, but you will find no drawn lines suggesting the presence of a bowling alley, or a restaurant or even a theatre. I forgot all about minor concerns like the brief while in pursuit of this notion of a design exclusively derived from the ecstasy of driving of a car at high speed around and up through a building; or, if a pedestrian, of negotiating escalators built like amusement park rides that used a mechanically dubious

Initial proposal consisting of a giant triangulated advertising frame with programmatic elements suspended within the frame, appearing here as white blobs. Parking was limited to a plinth like structure at the base.

3O

Oblique projection of escalators

South elevation of shrink wrap membrane roof

East-west vertical section.

The black smear running horizontally across the image was intended to suggest the presence of the Coventry Street flyover.

South elevation of escalator bank.

The design is based on the somewhat dubious assumption that the step units in a conventional escalator, which 'dead head' (US railroad terminology) for half of their circumlocutory journey, could be redesigned to carry passengers up and down at the same time.

Part of Sin Palace model

Wire frame projection of circular car ramp

Wire frame projection of straight car ramp

Isometric projection of structural escape staircase core. The flights and landings are in the form of a double helix.

This drawing, having been at one time part of the Metromedia collection, was recently discovered in an antique store in Lambertsville NJ. 32

Oblique projection of escalators

South elevation of shrink wrap membrane roof

East-west vertical section.

The black smear running horizontally across the image was intended to suggest the presence of the Coventry Street flyover.

South elevation of escalator bank.

The design is based on the somewhat dubious assumption that the step units in a conventional escalator, which 'dead head' (US railroad terminology) for half of their circumlocutory journey, could be redesigned to carry passengers up and down at the same time.

Part of Sin Palace model

Wire frame projection of circular car ramp

Wire frame projection of straight car ramp

Isometric projection of structural escape staircase core. The flights and landings are in the form of a double helix.

This drawing, having been at one time part of the Metromedia collection, was recently discovered in an antique store in Lambertsville NJ. 32

SEASIDE ENTERTAINMENT BUILDING

SOUTH BANK DEVELOPMENT Warren CHALK + Ron HERRON + Dennis CROMPTON with the South Bank Development group at the LCC, later GLC 1960-62

The South Bank Centre Development encompasses a New Concert Hall and Recital Room, Art Gallery and external pedestrian and Road Works, designed for the L.C.C.

David GREENE 1961

Between 1958 and 1962, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron, later joined by Dennis Crompton, were responsible as Job Architects, with others, for a series of schemes investigating the development of the whole of the South Bank area of the River Thames, between Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges for the London County Council. These schemes included the National Theatre, a new Opera House, the National Film Theatre, Childrens’ Theatre, Hotel and Conference Centre.

This was completed by the Group’s successors in 1967/8, at the Greater London Council, who executed the design as detailed and specifed by the original Group.

This project was motivated entirely by a desire to make a model out of fibreglass – a magical material.

As an introduction to this whim, it should be seen in the context of a project I tried to do at art school in 1958 to design an air terminal in the style of a Buck Rogers drawing. It was made out of fibreglass panels attached to a metal frame. I was advised, quite categorically, that external elements would never be made of this reprehensible, shoddy material. In 1959, now working in a London practice, I fond myself detailing some cladding panels in glassreinforced plastic. Remembering the advice of my tutor, I decided to revisit the technology of spray plastics.

At this time this was quite a new material and not only did the resin smell quite divine, the ‘skin’ of the model could take on a translucency that was impossible to achieve with other materials. The model was made in my Hampstead bed-sitter and in the absence of the facilities to make a positive mould to form panels to lay the glass fibre on I mimicked the way the mosque model had been made by constructing a wire frame first.

It is called Bournemouth Leisure Centre but there is no particular reason for this. I had no programme in mind at all whilst making the model and as far as a site was concerned anywhere in the climatic zone was suitable as long as it had a cliff – Bournemouth is a big holiday destination and has good cliffs, perfect! And maybe, it was a small tribute to Peter Cook, Bournemouth being the place where he had got his degree in Architecture. ‘Leisure Factory’ might have been a better title but it might have just as well been ‘office building’ or ‘Bulgarian Embassy.”

So even then the modernist assertion that had been so firmly placed in innocent young minds at architectural school was appearing more dubious and unsustainable… but this is all beside the point. The motivation of the project is clear – to explore the potential of a new material to produce new architectural shapes, forms and spatial possibilities.

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SEASIDE ENTERTAINMENT BUILDING

SOUTH BANK DEVELOPMENT Warren CHALK + Ron HERRON + Dennis CROMPTON with the South Bank Development group at the LCC, later GLC 1960-62

The South Bank Centre Development encompasses a New Concert Hall and Recital Room, Art Gallery and external pedestrian and Road Works, designed for the L.C.C.

David GREENE 1961

Between 1958 and 1962, Warren Chalk and Ron Herron, later joined by Dennis Crompton, were responsible as Job Architects, with others, for a series of schemes investigating the development of the whole of the South Bank area of the River Thames, between Westminster and Blackfriars Bridges for the London County Council. These schemes included the National Theatre, a new Opera House, the National Film Theatre, Childrens’ Theatre, Hotel and Conference Centre.

This was completed by the Group’s successors in 1967/8, at the Greater London Council, who executed the design as detailed and specifed by the original Group.

This project was motivated entirely by a desire to make a model out of fibreglass – a magical material.

As an introduction to this whim, it should be seen in the context of a project I tried to do at art school in 1958 to design an air terminal in the style of a Buck Rogers drawing. It was made out of fibreglass panels attached to a metal frame. I was advised, quite categorically, that external elements would never be made of this reprehensible, shoddy material. In 1959, now working in a London practice, I fond myself detailing some cladding panels in glassreinforced plastic. Remembering the advice of my tutor, I decided to revisit the technology of spray plastics.

At this time this was quite a new material and not only did the resin smell quite divine, the ‘skin’ of the model could take on a translucency that was impossible to achieve with other materials. The model was made in my Hampstead bed-sitter and in the absence of the facilities to make a positive mould to form panels to lay the glass fibre on I mimicked the way the mosque model had been made by constructing a wire frame first.

It is called Bournemouth Leisure Centre but there is no particular reason for this. I had no programme in mind at all whilst making the model and as far as a site was concerned anywhere in the climatic zone was suitable as long as it had a cliff – Bournemouth is a big holiday destination and has good cliffs, perfect! And maybe, it was a small tribute to Peter Cook, Bournemouth being the place where he had got his degree in Architecture. ‘Leisure Factory’ might have been a better title but it might have just as well been ‘office building’ or ‘Bulgarian Embassy.”

So even then the modernist assertion that had been so firmly placed in innocent young minds at architectural school was appearing more dubious and unsustainable… but this is all beside the point. The motivation of the project is clear – to explore the potential of a new material to produce new architectural shapes, forms and spatial possibilities.

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