Sir Peter Cook, the British architect, teacher and writer, rose to fame in the 1960s as one of the founding members of the avant-garde architecture group Archigram, which was known for its futuristic, technology-inspired designs.
Archigram stood out because all its designs were hypothetical. Too radical perhaps for their time, none of them were ever built. Advances in digital technology since the mid-1990s, however, have allowed 78-year-old Cook, who was knighted in 2007, to bring some of his designs to fruition. Notable among them is the Kunsthaus, the art museum in Graz, Austria, which is sometimes known as the “friendly alien”.
Many of Cook’s sketches are being exhibited for the first time in India at New Delhi’s Gallery Espace. We met him a week ago—the day his show, Sir Peter Cook: Drawings From 1960s–2000s, was inaugurated. Edited excerpts from an interview:
This exhibition is being promoted as your first exhibition in Asia.
I have to contradict that. It’s the first time that I have shown in a selling gallery. I have done some shows in galleries in Tokyo and Osaka, but this is the first selling show, that’s true. It’s courageous in a way (for the gallery). In the US, Germany and England, there is a precedent—there have been such shows. Maybe my work is suitable because it’s pictorial, and to some extent decorative. I mean, I think it has a lot of ideas in it; the thing is that some people do architectural drawings that may or may not have ideas, but are boring to look at. And that’s a funny thing for me to say, because who am I to say it, but it is an honest answer.
My drawings have plenty of content and are agreeable to the eye. I have sold quite a bit of art at the Royal Academy (of Arts, London) and elsewhere to people…maybe they are making an architectural collection, sure, but quite a lot of people buy them because they fall in love with a picture. Increasingly I have noticed that it’s getting to the point that architectural drawings are something that you can enjoy and also contemplate it and think about its implications and also find it pretty. Now that’s dangerous (laughs).
You are best known for your association with Archigram. What made the group special?
Archigram came together to prevent modernism from becoming a sterile and safe orthodoxy. It relied on a future of interminable resources. Archigram’s visions did, in fact, succeed in inspiring a new generation of architects and architecture. Most obviously, their radical suggestion to reveal infrastructural elements and reverse traditional building hierarchies inspired the famous Pompidou Centre (in Paris) by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, and their drawings and visions continue to be invoked in urban thinking today.
They say buildings convey ideas—what ideas would your buildings embody?
The idea that drives me is combining architecture with society and technology. I would include some radical ideas to my art that can challenge standards of architectural discourse today. I do not relish straight, minimalist architecture. I find it predictable and boring. I enjoy a sense of “theatre” in architecture.
Are all the sketches at this exhibition for hypothetical buildings?
Some of them are more immediately buildable than others. Some of them are conceptual but have quite a lot of buildable or transferable elements in them. We built that (points to a photo of the Kunsthaus) and people said, “You can’t build that.” We had to wait till computer processes could do that relatively cheaply.
The technology and the ways that people are dealing with irrigation have actually moved forward. My wife is from Israel and I visited her mother’s garden and it was a normal suburban garden with computer-controlled irrigation. The Israelis are very good at irrigation; they are very clever with applied electronics.
I thought, my God, there was a lot of potential here. And it got me thinking—more vegetation but controlled vegetation; furniture inspired by the vegetation and then, can you have kitchen appliances among the bushes… You sniff out a good idea…you pick up stuff sort of sideways. You get an idea and you put it in your mental back pocket. You pull it out again when it’s appropriate.
What are your thoughts on town planning?
Oh, I would love to do it! When I was 16 or so, I wanted to be a town planner. But it became rapidly obvious for my generation of architects that it went further and further away from architecture. It became more about demographic studies; it became more math and there was no room for imagination and people like me were put off it. They really don’t want arty-farty people messing it up. They want definitive answers to problems. I think it is sad, because what you get are very boring cities.
You are also a renowned teacher. What direction do you think architectural education should take?
I am about to write a substantial length article for The Architectural Review in England on exactly that subject and I have already decided on the title and the rest of it is just swirling around in my head. After 50 years of teaching I do have an opinion. The title I want to use is “Creativity And Academe”.
I think that in recent years architectural education has become too academic, meaning that it has been organized to satisfy its credentials in universities. And it has forgotten a lot of the craft instincts, artistic instincts and generally, its creative instincts. What you are getting is a generation of well-trained, book-reading, Internet-surfing, middlebrow architects very suitable to commercial operations. All they are interested in is commercial success. Then you might as well sell insurance.
I think the key thing that ought to be taught is how to look. People should be taught how to observe and then they ought to be taught how to use resources imaginatively. Things like how high you can stretch a piece of wire; how thick you can make a piece of concrete before it can crack—that side of things. In the 1960s and 1970s, there used to be a book called The Whole Earth Catalog and they just collected ideas with illustrations; and I think that sort of thing should be taught; how to be resourceful.
There is need for what are loosely called boutique architects, which I suppose we are…who can then be aligned to bigger organizations. And there is also the danger of losing the local, resourceful architect, somewhat akin to a village witch doctor. Not the grand architect, one who is trusted like the local plumber. I use the word witch doctor deliberately, because from a Western perspective, it’s a bit of hocus-pocus; some of it is logical, some of it is invented. That kind of person is almost sort of an artisan and I think that there is a need for that sort of architect too.
Architects have lost touch with communities. There is this funny pressure in England that if you are an architect you have to have a proper office; you get frowned upon if you don’t have a receptionist and a glass plate and a brochure… I have been to other places like Germany where people run offices from an apartment block, don’t seem to have a receptionist, are made professors, are trusted, get quite big buildings.
Do you think an over-reliance on the digital world is dangerous?
I see the danger but I am not frightened by it. I embrace all technologies, including old technologies—whatever works. And I think it’s interesting to have combinations of new and old. Speaking from an English perspective, I think we are sufficiently cussed that there will always be deviance. We are a naturally deviant culture. We have a lot in common with the Japanese. We are basically a rather cruel, naughty race, and I think there will always be enough people who will be bored by doing the correct thing. Perhaps not the majority, but an articulate and talented minority.
Sir Peter Cook: Drawings From 1960s-2000s is on till 22 September, 11am-7pm (Sundays closed), at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi (26326267). The works are on sale (price on request).
