Archigram was originally and fundamentally a group of British architects (Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Mike Webb) who produced conceptual architecture and architectural experiments in graphic, printed media (magazines and representational methods ). These magazines were produced during the sixties, which was a time of great social, cultural and technological change both in Britain itself and the world as a whole, and Archigram, being of the avant-garde, radical, new generation of architects, were not only aware and sensitive to these changes, but used them to fuel their pushing of the boundaries of conceptual architecture and graphic communication techniques.
The second world war was still in recent memory (and all the technological developments that accompanied it, such as the atomic bomb), and Britain’s efforts to rebuild and regenerate were still active while Archigram produced their graphic works. The space race and a strong faith in the power and capacities of technology were culturally apparent, as well as science fiction, but other phenomena like Woodstock, equal rights movements, the criticism of consumerism and modernism, and pop art were also gaining traction and popularity world-wide at this time. It seems only natural to begin to look at Archigram as an expression and exploration of these then-current events and this then-new, global, cultural tone, given the number of cultural upheavals happening at their time.
As the world was collectively redefining itself in the wake of WWII, and in the wake of modernist thought as an undermining and ridiculing of all that is culturally accepted as static and known to be true or defined, Archigram set out to extend this through to the field of architecture.
-Tobias
CUSHICLE AND SUITALOON 