"Peter Cook: Retrospective" at The Museum for Architectural Drawing
24/11/2016.
[BER] Germany. 30.10.2016 < 12.02.2017
metalocus, CLAUDIA CENDOYA
metalocus, CLAUDIA CENDOYA
The latest exhibition of the Museum for Architectural Drawing collects drawings of the English Peter Cook. "Peter Cook. Retrospective" enables a view into the artist’s work from Archigram to CRAB, from 1968 to today, from Plug-In City to Hidden City.
Veg House: Stage 5 by Peter Cook. Print, watercolour. 2001. 50 x 70 cm. Image © Peter Cook.
Peter Cook. REAL CITY: Perspectiva de Ever Screened Type, 1986, papel de calco, tinta, 64 x 62 cm © Peter Cook
Medina Circle Towers por Peter Cook. Impresión con acuarela, lápiz de colores y película plástica roja. Tel Aviv 1997. 142,2 x 62,2 cm. Imagen © Royal Academy of Arts, Londres. Fotógrafa: Prudene Cuming Associates Limited
City hidden by Peter Cook. Mixed technique. 2013. 101.5 x 101.2 cm. Image © Peter Cook.
Sponge Building, section; by Peter Cook. Tracing paper, ink. 1976. 47,9x101,2 cm. Image © Peter Cook
Exit to the West: East elevation of Berlin in the E phase by Peter Cook. Tracing paper, ink. 1988. 102 x 52 cm © Peter Cook
Untitled drawing by Peter Cook. Tracing paper, ink. 1968. 38,5 x 93,5 cm. Image © Peter Cook
The City as a Responsive Environment: The Urban Mark as City by Peter Cook. Print, coloured pencils and airbrush/Druck. 1972. 60,8 x 60,8 cm © Peter Cook.
Vegetated Lump by Peter Cook. Colored pencils, watercolor, pastels on paper. 1972/1973. 45.0 x 46.7 cm. Image © Peter Cook
Diclosures: the secret garden revisited por Peter Cook. Papel, rotulador, lápices de colores, acuarela, collage. 1975. 44,8 x 63,0 mm. Imagen © Peter Cook
"Peter Cook, Retrospective" at the Tchoban Foundation. Berlin, 2016
Second Corners por Peter Cook. Técnica mixta. Pinto (Madrid, España). 69 x 49 cm. Imagen © Peter Cook. Fotografía: Royal Academy of Arts, Londres. Fotógrafos: FXP y John Riddy.
"Peter Cook, Retrospective" at the Tchoban Foundation. Berlin, 2016
Peter Cook, the figure to whom the Museum for Architectural Drawing dedicates its latest exhibition, is regarded as one of the leading instigators of Archigram, who override and burst apart the given notions of form and space, driven by the curiosity to explore what a future world may look like and question whether architectural language is at all set by boundaries.
Archigram searched for new solutions and concept models, focussing on the development of society. Underwater cities, living cells, plug-ins and hybrid villas were created: the ideas and experiments from this period, particularly the central motif of metamorphosis, recur throughout Peter Cook’s lifework.
In the series Way Out West: Berlin made in the 1980s, Peter Cook posed the question, “Why is the language of architecture so limited?”. A cactus is set with three symbols of Western architecture: the grid, a skyscraper and a square, where the spread of vegetation, again the process of metamorphosis, transforms the skyscraper to the point that it is no longer recognisable.
Some of his drawings are based on actual projects, such the urban planning development for Frankfurt-Oberrad in 1986, Real City: Frankfurt (which remained unrealised); many are rather experiments and utopias, such as Arcadia, Vegetated Lump and Hidden City, where the architecture was inspired by the surrounding vegetation, its beginning and end blurred, merging organically into nature.
If you go in the next months to Berlin, do not miss the exhibition, which runs until February 12, 2016.
Archigram searched for new solutions and concept models, focussing on the development of society. Underwater cities, living cells, plug-ins and hybrid villas were created: the ideas and experiments from this period, particularly the central motif of metamorphosis, recur throughout Peter Cook’s lifework.
In the series Way Out West: Berlin made in the 1980s, Peter Cook posed the question, “Why is the language of architecture so limited?”. A cactus is set with three symbols of Western architecture: the grid, a skyscraper and a square, where the spread of vegetation, again the process of metamorphosis, transforms the skyscraper to the point that it is no longer recognisable.
Some of his drawings are based on actual projects, such the urban planning development for Frankfurt-Oberrad in 1986, Real City: Frankfurt (which remained unrealised); many are rather experiments and utopias, such as Arcadia, Vegetated Lump and Hidden City, where the architecture was inspired by the surrounding vegetation, its beginning and end blurred, merging organically into nature.
If you go in the next months to Berlin, do not miss the exhibition, which runs until February 12, 2016.
More information
Location
Christinenstraße Street 18a, 10119 Berlin, Germany
Dates
From October 30, 2016 until February 12, 2017
Opening hours
From Monday to Friday from 14:00 until 19:00. Saturdays and Sundays from 13:00 until 17:00.
Entrance fee
5€
PETER COOK
SIR PETER COOK. Born 1936 Southend on Sea, studied architecture at Bournemouth College of Art and the AA. Co-founded the Archigram and the group itself in 1961 with David Greene while working at James Cubitt and Partners. The dynamo of the Archigram group, director of ICA, (1970-72) and Art Net (1972-1980), his most famous projects with Archigram include Plug-In Cities, Instant Cities.
He has been a hugely influential writer and educator, teaching internationally but especially at the AA; and then as Professor and Chair of The Bartlett School of Architecture (1990-2005). He was the joint winner of the RIBA Annie Spink Award for Education with David Greene in 2002.
Went on to found new practices including partnership with Christine Hawley, Spacelab with Colin Fournier, designing Kunsthaus Graz, (shortlisted for 2003 Stirling Prize) and Crab Studios with Gavin Robotham, and also works in collaboration with HOK. Knighted 2007.
The most talkative and “public“ member of the group. Enjoys inventing situations and very much enjoys forming analogies between the quirks and experiences of individual people and possibilities for the environment that are ambiguous and unexpected. Preoccupied by the idea of “Metamorphosis“. Enjoys drawing illustrations of these analogies and metamorphoses rather than writing about them.
Archigram, Edited by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron & Mike Webb, 1972 [reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999].
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