Archigram is a group of British architects (Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb), who were leaders in the 1960s, British avant-garde. Their work, striving to be sensitive to the massive cultural shifts occurring during the period within which they worked, took to radical redefinition of what could be considered architecture. The nature of Archigram’s work, however, was not in the actual development of building designs that were to be constructed. The name ‘Archigram’ was actually the title of a magazine the group created and published which strove to be a platform for young architects, students and recent graduates, to publish their work, which was otherwise impossible in the current climate.
The themes that the magazines covered changed over time,
“from the tension between the durable and transient to proposals for megastructural networks in the first half of the [1960s], then onto others for self-contained skins in the second half, and finally to those for the disintegration of architectural oobjects into a technologically driven landscape at the end” (Beyond Archigram: The Structure of Circulation, Hadas A. Steiner, pp 3),
But the focus of the literature was always on the graphic representation of the proposals. Archigram used visual media as a means of probing the limits of what architecture could be at the time, as this was much more feasible in drawings than in physical construction, and conceptual extremes were much more accessible and expressible.
Archigram, as the publishers referred to themselves as well, due to the excitement around technology that was culturally present, wanted to explore architecture as a series of communication systems, rather than something static and defined, and they wanted to explore “the tight integration of technology and human life”. (Dance with Archigram, Kim Hyouk-Joon, pp 149). They (and Michael Webb, the designer of the Cushicle and Suitaloon, particularly) took an interest in the architecturally programmatic nature of the car, as technology progressed and allowed functions that were previously tied to specific, static architectural spaces (e.g. work done in an office cubicle) to be done anywhere, particularly in a car. Archigram explored the idea of “an absolute mobility of the urban body, its physical and electronic connectivity, an idea of unstable and fluid community, a transfer of the idea of architecture as a ‘machine for living’ to a new mechanized and encompassing anthropic landscape.” (Architecture: Movements and Trends from the 19th Century to the Present, ed.: Luca Molinari, pp 212). They, however, as a natural extension of the tone of the cultural trends surrounding them, maintained a critical and satirical tone throughout their work: they “created new architecture in the second mechanical age by unifying science fiction, consumer culture, pleasure and hedonism through ‘science for kicks’.” (Kim Hyouk-Joon, 199). Their work was “an endless… [satirizing] of reality and… [maximizing of] another possibility of reality, rather than a realization of past ideals or a conquest of each member’s character.” (190).
CUSHICLE AND SUITALOON 