Peter Cook. Professor Sir Peter Cook, Southend-On-Sea English born architect is acclaimed as a student, educator, curator, director, academic, designer, and probably predominantly in Cooks eyes an experimentalist.
Amazing Archigram, 1964
Cover illustration of the fourth issue of Archigram magazine (EDITED by Ajay Singh Sihra)
By Ajay Singh Sihra.
CANTERBURY SCHOOL of ARCHITECTURE.
Professor Sir Peter Cook, Southend-On-Sea English born architect is acclaimed as a student, educator, curator, director, academic, designer, and probably predominantly in Cooks' eyes an experimentalist. His nonconformist fifty-year career accredited by being on Queen Elizabeth II 's birthday honor list 2007 is the appreciation and recognition of the burgeoning aspirations preparatory in the eight-year-old Peter Cook. Rather than conforming to the masses Cook believes he received the knighthood for his dissimilar unorthodox approach to architecture.
"It's important that you can be recognised for doing valuable work without having to build lots of big buildings, rather for being a maverick creative academic."1
Cook was introduced to Architecture at an early age due to his father, who had been an army officer in the First World War, now being the quartering commandment for the Midlands. His fathers job would entail visits to buildings deciding whether to requisition them or not. He would take the three or four year old Peter Cook along with him to study these properties.
"He was looking at buildings, and I was looking at buildings with him. And the myth amongst family is that, I was fascinated by this."2
Not only does Cook relate his interest into architecture due to his childhood and father, but several others too; he collected castles and cathedrals as a boy. Also moving to new towns frequently navigating, analyzing and dissecting his surroundings, probably not architecturally, but as a means of familiarising, this later serving him as an architectural practice. Justified in stating that, "by experience, you built up a sort of repertoire of responses to buildings and environments." 2.
Before attending his first, albeit little, architecture school at the age of sixteen Cook had already started his own education. Self confessed to be interested more so in modern architecture, of that time, he could be found in the local library perusing books such as Pevsner and Corbusier's When the Cathedrals Were White, amongst others. The school taught him about drainage and stoneworks but not of the modernist ideologies and buildings that intrigued and captured him. Declaring himself a modernist at the mere age of thirteen and looking for something new led him to start thinking outside the ...
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Before attending his first, albeit little, architecture school at the age of sixteen Cook had already started his own education. Self confessed to be interested more so in modern architecture, of that time, he could be found in the local library perusing books such as Pevsner and Corbusier's When the Cathedrals Were White, amongst others. The school taught him about drainage and stoneworks but not of the modernist ideologies and buildings that intrigued and captured him. Declaring himself a modernist at the mere age of thirteen and looking for something new led him to start thinking outside the box. What was being taught at the school, to him, was 'funny old things' deeming that castles and cathedrals were pretty much all alike.
"Once you've seen one you've seen them all in many respects"2
Leaving his local architecture school to study further at the Bournemouth College of Art in 1953 through to 1958 Cook then went on to the Architectural Association from 1958, graduating in 1960. His first job found him working at James Cubitt & Partners and it was whilst here in 1961 that the controversial group, Archigram, was founded although not yet named. First the broadsheet group consisted of just three members; David Greene, Michael Webb and Cook but later, by 1963, three other members had joined; Ron Herron, Warren Chalk and Dennis Crompton. The group collectively named Archigram. There were other members of the group but these were seen to be the core although Sadler suggested Theo Crosby was the "hidden hand" behind the group3. As editor of the Architectural Design magazine, from 1953 till 1962, Crosby was able to give coverage to the Archigram group also introducing them to the London based Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). 1963 saw the exhibition called Living Cities arrive in the ICA as a consequence of this. Crosby gave the Archigram group another stepping-stone in their introduction to the world by allowing them to take on experimental projects within the Taylor Woodrow Design Group, which he headed 4.
The Archigram period of time was to serve as a pinnacle in his architectural life, whether he knew it to be or not. The work produced by Archigram is referred to and regarded now for their avantgarde approach to architecture, something that is noticeable throughout Cooks' career. 'Their legacy proves difficult to quantify not only because the members contributed to a diffuse international discourse about architecture but also because their projects seem to presage innumerable contemporary trends, including both high-tech and sustainable approaches to design." 5. However this not always being the case, Archigram first regarded by many as non conforming with the "sacred discipline" 6 of architecture having its very first publication "brushed off by the few senior architects... as a student joke" 6. With an Architectural Record article referring to them and their ideas as "hopelessly utopian and absolutely unbuildable" 7. Archigram had to pursue their thoughts and feelings if it were ever to reach the esteem in which it is now held.
They fed of off the idea, if you agree with Cooks' True Story, that "wot's being built now is boring..." and in order to change it they would "...publish the cheerful stuff" 8.
ARCHIGRAM - The True Story Told by Peter Cook,
Page 1 illustrations and notes.
The first Archigram publication insisting, in the form of a poem, that;
"A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of 'Modern' yet in fact retains those precepts. We have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image which is an insult to functionalism. You can roll out steel - any length. You can blow up a balloon - any size. You can mould plastic - any shape. Blokes that built the Forth Bridge - they didn't worry." 9
Cook, Green and Webb implying that they are tired of the 'intellectual conservatism of the British architectural establishment' 10 and that, in order to combat this, they would seek to explore new avenues. The group didn't actually recognize themselves with a generic name until people come to call them the Archigram Group. Peter writing, "funnily enough, we ourselves did not call ourselves that name but more and mored people did...so one day we said 'what the hell'...and made a letterhead with 'ARCHIGRAM GROUP' on it...and there we are...." 11. In 1972 the group split off, not fully disbanding till 74, to pursue their own paths, some designing, some teaching, some becoming archivists of their histories but none yet aware of how influential some of their ideas would become. 12
Cooks path lead him to teaching which he had started several years before Archigram had disbanded in 1964. After graduating from the AA he went back to teach for twenty-six years until 1990 whilst also teaching at other establishments. Institute of Contemporary Arts from 1969-71, established and directed Art Net from 1972-79, from 1984-2004 he was Professor of Architecture at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt and his latest post from 1990 to 2006 a Barrtlett Professor and Chair of the Bartlett School of UCL. 13
Bibliography
. UCL Bartlett School Newsletter (Interview review with Peter Cook)
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0706/07062201
Accessed 21st December 2010.
2. Online Architectural Record Magazine, Interview with Peter Cook by Bryant Rousseau (pg.2 of the interview record.)
http://archrecord.construction.com/features/interviews/0711petercook/0711Petercook-2.asp
Accessed 19th December 2010.
3. Simon Sadler, Archigram: architecture without architecture, Cambridge Mass MIT Press, 2005, page 161. ISBN 0262693224.
4. Peter Cook, Archigram, Reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, page 44. ISBN 1568981945.
5. R. Stephen Sennott, Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture, Routledge; 1 edition 2004 - volume 1, ISBN 1579582435
6. 'Amazing Archigram: A Supplement' in the Yale School of Architecture journal Perspecta, vol. 11, 1967, page 133
7. Architectural Record Magazine article, Kunsthaus Graz - ARGE Kunsthaus, By Liane LeFaivre, issue January 2004.
8. Peter Cook, Archigram - The True Story Told by Peter Cook, from The Archigram Story, Page 1.
9. Peter Cook, Michael Webb & David Greene, Archigram 1st Issue Broadsheet, Poem by David Greene, 1961.
0. Online Design Museum supported by the British Council http://designmuseum.org/design/archigram Accessed 26th December 2010.
1. Peter Cook, Archigram - The True Story Told by Peter Cook, from The Archigram Story, Page 6. ('mored' is an exact copy from the page, intention probably being the word 'more' but a typo occurred.)
2. R. Stephen Sennott, Encyclopedia of 20th Century Architecture, Routledge; 1 edition 2004 - volume 1, ISBN 1579582435 - "Archigram's significant collective activities ended in 1972, although its members remained active as designers, teachers, and archivists of their own history."
3. Online CRAB Studio - Sir Peter Cook tab. http://www.crabstudio.co.uk/Peter/popup.html Accessed 21st December 2010.
