The pioneering 60s architecture group Archigram have won the Royal Institute of British Architect’s Royal Gold Medal. Check David Rock’s fine citation for more details. Rock highlights the range of differing perspectives, skills and backgrounds in the Archigram team, as well as their awareness of the wider cultural contexts which informed their work (and which were in turn informed by their work). A fascinating model of creative teamwork, open to arts and sciences equally – most of all, open to daring ideas.
Anecdotal sign of their resurgence: finding Archigram images/texts via Google less than 12 months ago was not easy – now you can find all kinds of fabulous stuff [via Matt Jones – thanks!]
Michael Webb, one of the founders of Archigram gave a delighted lecture at University of IL @ Chicago last night (Oct_20th_02). I’m not sure if he can call himself an architect, base on the fact that none of his projects were ever built ( with no solutions of details nor constructing possibilities),and he also didn’t speak in the behalf of archigram as a whole. But architectural vocabularies were screaming thought out all his projects, some of his projects were so strong, that I think is even stronger than a lot of the well known architecture relics. Keep in mind that, he is still living in the 60’s, way before the time of animations and 3d rendering. Yet many projects in our generations contain traces of his works, his idea cities and the relationship with Human Vs Cities and Human Vs Mobility, which generates works for architects in projects such as star wars or the 5th element Rising the question of “What is the future of architecture, or what would architecture evolve into at different dimensions, different planets or even different galleries. I didn’t understand nor accept the role of paper/daydream architecture until I read a passage by Ross Lovegrove, “It’s only the future if it can’t be made.”
why did the Archigram win the RIBA gold medal?