Edited with text by Peter Cook. Text by Archigram et al. Reader’s guide edited by Thomas Evans, Steve Kroeter. Text by Peter Cook, David Grahame Shane, Reyner Banham, Shirley Surya, Helen Castle. Contributions by Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Aric Chen, Beatriz Colomina, Mike Davies, Odile Decq, Neil Denari, Norman Foster, Kenneth Frampton, Nicholas Grimshaw, Ivan Harbour, Tom Heneghan, Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, et al.
Architecture's most influential, innovative and beloved underground magazine, reissued for the first time in a handsome clamshell box
Published with Designers & Books.
Inspired by comic-book culture, Pop art, psychedelia, the space race, sci-fi, Constructivism and Buckminster Fuller, the hugely influential British collective Archigram was the epitome of 1960s avant-garde architecture. Their self-published, lo-fi but materially ingenious magazine Archigram, begun in 1961, announced their ideas for such visionary concepts as "Walking City," "Plug-In City" and "Instant City." It also served to connect the international avant-garde of the 1960s. Archigram forged links with the Metabolists in Japan, Frei Otto, Utopie and Haus-Rucker-Co in Europe, and Buckminster Fuller in the US. They were also championed by critics such as Charles Jencks and Reyner Banham, who brought Archigram's famous fourth pop-up issue to the US in 1966. Today Archigram is one of the rarest major small-press publications of the 1960s, with individual issues selling for a minimum of $600. Archigram's influence has proved enduring, perhaps most famously in its widely acknowledged impact on Richard Rogers' and Renzo Piano's Centre Pompidou. Its members also taught and influenced the likes of Bernard Tschumi and Zaha Hadid, and inspired a later generation of nineties and noughties modernists embracing the potential of technology such as Future Systems, Foreign Office Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. This authorized publication features exact facsimiles of all 10 issues (from number 1 in 1961 to the final issue 9½ in 1974). All the original surprises and idiosyncrasies are faithfully reproduced: flyers, pockets, a pop-up centerfold, posters, gatefolds and an electronic resistor. (Only the seeds in the seed packet attached to issue 9 are not included, as seeds cannot be shipped across borders.) Accompanying the facsimile issues is a fully illustrated reader's guide featuring essays by Peter Cook, David Grahame Shane and Reyner Banham; tributes from the architectural community including Tadao Ando, Kenneth Frampton, Norman Foster, Zamp Kelp, David Rockwell and Patrik Schumacher; an index of key concepts and contents; a scrapbook of previously unseen archival images; a bibliography of the partners' publications; and biographies. The architect-collaborative group Archigram was established in London by Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, David Greene and Michael Webb. Working together until 1975, the group operated as an experimental think tank, producing a magazine, projects, models, exhibitions and proposals that represented a shift in how architectural practice is considered, prioritizing processes and responsive structures for living over the notion of architecture as a static, form-based commodity. Influenced by popular culture and responding to the proliferation of technological advances at the time, as well as recognizing the increasing social and political discontent, Archigram's production emphasized mobility and flexibility in ways that continue to have currency today. Contributors include: Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Aric Chen, Beatriz Colomina, Mike Davies, Odile Decq, Neil Denari, Norman Foster, Kenneth Frampton, Nicholas Grimshaw, Ivan Harbour, Tom Heneghan, Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, Toyo Ito, Zamp Kelp, Reed Kroloff, Toshiko Mori, Laurids Ortner and Manfred Ortner, Juhani Pallasmaa, Mónica Ponce de León, David Rockwell, Moshe Safdie, Annabelle Selldorf, Patrik Schumacher, Alan Stanton, Bernard Tschumi.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
The Slowdown
Spencer Bailey
It’s been more than 60 years since Archigram hit the press, but the magazine founded by Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, David Greene, and Michael Webb still hasn’t lost its charge.
Fast Company
Nate Berg
The category of unbuilt and fantastical design ideas known as 'paper architecture' may have no better exemplar than the radical British architecture group Archigram.
Harvard Graduate School of Art and Design
For those who want to build their own Archigram archive, the forthcoming facsimile edition offers consumers the same tactile delights as the originals—along with the nostalgia of the group’s 1960s and ’70s radical design sensibilities that changed the course of architecture.
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Friday, November 14, at 1PM, Columbia GSAPP presents a special Library is Open panel discussing the new facsimile edition of Archigram magazine published by D.A.P. and Designers & Books, together with Beatriz Colomina (Princeton), Thomas Evans (D.A.P.), Amelyn Ng (GSAPP), David Grahame Shane (GSAPP), and Bernard Tschumi (GSAPP, Bernard Tschumi Architects), who will be in a conversation moderated by Bart-Jan Polman (GSAPP). Register here if you are a non-CU affiliate and would like to attend this event. continue to blog
Tuesday, October 28, from 6:30–8:30 PM, please join us at The Cooper Union for a panel discussion on the enduring influence of Archigram. Thomas Evans, editor of our new facsimile edition, Archigram: The Magazine, and designers Julia Ma and Miko McGinty, will be joined by Diana Darling, CEO and Creative Director of The Architect’s Newspaper, and Evangelos Kotsioris, MoMA Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, to discuss this formally inventive, conceptually daring and historically consequential small-press magazine. Moderated by James Lowder, Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. continue to blog
Tuesday, October 14, through Thursday, November 6, The Cooper Union presents Archigram: Making a Facsimile, an exhibition on the making of Archigram: The Magazine, a complex and ambitious architectural publication—initiated by D.A.P. publishing and Designers & Books in February 2024—that has resulted in the first full facsimile of one of the most formally inventive, conceptually daring and historically consequential small-press magazines of the postwar era. continue to blog
“It was a weird little thing: but in its hairiness was a certain intensity…” So writes original Archigram member Peter Cook in the readers’ guide to Archigram: The Magazine, launching in New York on Tuesday, October 28, at The Cooper Union. A two-year labor of love and an unprecedented feat of facsimile publishing, this 10-volume boxed set is the subject not just of a panel discussion starring editor Thomas Evans, designers Julia Ma and Miko McGinty and esteemed architecture and design authorities Diana Darling and Evangelos Kotsioris, but also an extremely thoughtful and intricate exhibition of ephemera and production materials related to its 2025 reincarnation put on by The Cooper Union’s graduate architecture department. “What needs to be remembered is the state of the architectural culture at the magazine’s point of origin: busy, self-satisfied and already falling prey to commercialism,” Cook concludes his essay. “In the middle to later period of its life, it was already coming under the critical atmosphere (led by the United States) of abstracted philosophy and detachment from the physicality of architecture on the part of influential architect-academics. In the early 2000s many young architects were openly envious of the inventiveness and jollity of the work. As we now reach another point, at which a PHYSICAL facsimile of the magazine becomes relevant, the cultural and intellectual mood is that of meekness, apology and a seriously narrow formal vocabulary. But as an inveterate Archigrammer, I know that this will pass, and that somewhere (maybe in a funny place) a group of characters will be using the facsimile as a reminder to DO SOMETHING…” continue to blog
“A new generation of architecture must arise—with forms and spaces which seem to reject the precepts of ‘Modern.’” Pictured here, the single typed and hand-diagrammed interior page of Archigram issue 1, May 1961 (folded and wrapped cover not shown.) According to Helen Castle, Director of Publishing and Learning Content at RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), this issue, produced in an edition of just 400 copies, was printed off a copy machine across from the office where Archigram founders Peter Cook and David Green were working in 1961. Famously, a piece of a potato was used to print the red dot. While our forthcoming facsimile edition will not call for cutting up potatoes to print color on issue 1, it will faithfully reproduce all 9.5 original editions of the magazine in all its cooky, experimental, manifesto-positive glory according to the standards of the remaining members of the collective—including Peter Cook and Dennis Crompton, who helped enormously with the production of this and every other issue before his death in January 2025.
Our Kickstarter campaign to bring Archigram back to life comes to an end tonight, Wednesday, March 19, at 6 PM. Thanks so much to all who have contributed so far. And to those who would still like to join, we welcome you to our publishing adventure! continue to blog
About two years ago, we were approached by Steve Kroeter of Designers & Books, publisher of the cult 2017 facsimile reprint of Italian futurist Fortunato Depero’s 1927 “bolted book,” Depero Futurista, about the possibility of collaborating on a different, even more ambitious facsimile reprint. When we heard the project concerned Archigram, one of the rarest, most ingenious and influential small press serials of the 1960s, we were immediately all-in. Inspired by Pop art, psychedelia, comic-book culture, sci-fi, Constructivism and the space race, Archigram magazine was founded in London by architects Warren Chalk (1927−88), Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton (1935−2025), Ron Herron (1930−94), David Greene and Michael Webb. From its launch in 1961 to issue 9 ½ in 1974, Archigram challenged and dazzled the international avant-garde across the worlds of architecture, design and art, and it is now considered a key, highly cited but rarely seen document of the creative counterculture. Only a handful of publicly accessible full sets are known in the world, including at Hong Kong’s M+ museum, Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and Columbia University’s Avery Library. Now on Kickstarter, for publication in October 2025, Archigram: The Magazine—the first-ever authorized facsimile of all 9.5 issues—will contain all the surprises and idiosyncrasies of the original issues, from flyers and pockets to posters, gatefolds, a pop-up centerfold and even an electronic “resistor.” Also included, a Reader’s Guide featuring essays by Peter Cook, David Grahame Shane and Reyner Banham; 28 tributes from architectural luminaries; an index of key concepts, projects and names; a scrapbook of previously unseen archival images; and more. Housed in a clamshell box, this faithful facsimile will be brought to life by book designers Julia Ma and Miko McGinty. continue to blog
Published by D.A.P.. Edited with text by Peter Cook. Text by Archigram et al. Reader’s guide edited by Thomas Evans, Steve Kroeter. Text by Peter Cook, David Grahame Shane, Reyner Banham, Shirley Surya, Helen Castle. Contributions by Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Aric Chen, Beatriz Colomina, Mike Davies, Odile Decq, Neil Denari, Norman Foster, Kenneth Frampton, Nicholas Grimshaw, Ivan Harbour, Tom Heneghan, Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, et al.
Architecture's most influential, innovative and beloved underground magazine, reissued for the first time in a handsome clamshell box
Published with Designers & Books.
Inspired by comic-book culture, Pop art, psychedelia, the space race, sci-fi, Constructivism and Buckminster Fuller, the hugely influential British collective Archigram was the epitome of 1960s avant-garde architecture. Their self-published, lo-fi but materially ingenious magazine Archigram, begun in 1961, announced their ideas for such visionary concepts as "Walking City," "Plug-In City" and "Instant City." It also served to connect the international avant-garde of the 1960s. Archigram forged links with the Metabolists in Japan, Frei Otto, Utopie and Haus-Rucker-Co in Europe, and Buckminster Fuller in the US. They were also championed by critics such as Charles Jencks and Reyner Banham, who brought Archigram's famous fourth pop-up issue to the US in 1966. Today Archigram is one of the rarest major small-press publications of the 1960s, with individual issues selling for a minimum of $600.
Archigram's influence has proved enduring, perhaps most famously in its widely acknowledged impact on Richard Rogers' and Renzo Piano's Centre Pompidou. Its members also taught and influenced the likes of Bernard Tschumi and Zaha Hadid, and inspired a later generation of nineties and noughties modernists embracing the potential of technology such as Future Systems, Foreign Office Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby.
This authorized publication features exact facsimiles of all 10 issues (from number 1 in 1961 to the final issue 9½ in 1974). All the original surprises and idiosyncrasies are faithfully reproduced: flyers, pockets, a pop-up centerfold, posters, gatefolds and an electronic resistor. (Only the seeds in the seed packet attached to issue 9 are not included, as seeds cannot be shipped across borders.) Accompanying the facsimile issues is a fully illustrated reader's guide featuring essays by Peter Cook, David Grahame Shane and Reyner Banham; tributes from the architectural community including Tadao Ando, Kenneth Frampton, Norman Foster, Zamp Kelp, David Rockwell and Patrik Schumacher; an index of key concepts and contents; a scrapbook of previously unseen archival images; a bibliography of the partners' publications; and biographies.
The architect-collaborative group Archigram was established in London by Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, David Greene and Michael Webb. Working together until 1975, the group operated as an experimental think tank, producing a magazine, projects, models, exhibitions and proposals that represented a shift in how architectural practice is considered, prioritizing processes and responsive structures for living over the notion of architecture as a static, form-based commodity. Influenced by popular culture and responding to the proliferation of technological advances at the time, as well as recognizing the increasing social and political discontent, Archigram's production emphasized mobility and flexibility in ways that continue to have currency today.
Contributors include: Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Aric Chen, Beatriz Colomina, Mike Davies, Odile Decq, Neil Denari, Norman Foster, Kenneth Frampton, Nicholas Grimshaw, Ivan Harbour, Tom Heneghan, Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, Toyo Ito, Zamp Kelp, Reed Kroloff, Toshiko Mori, Laurids Ortner and Manfred Ortner, Juhani Pallasmaa, Mónica Ponce de León, David Rockwell, Moshe Safdie, Annabelle Selldorf, Patrik Schumacher, Alan Stanton, Bernard Tschumi.
