Date: 18 June 04
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Peter Cook (born in Southend-on-sea in 1936) has had a profound influence on architectural theory and practice since founding Archigram in l961. The experimental activities of Archigram became some of the most documented and discussed events of the period and an exhibition featuring the avant garde collective is currently touring the UK.
In recognition of their inspirational and influential contribution to architecture, Archigram were awarded, in 2002, the prestigious Gold Medal award of the Royal Institute of British Architects. More recently Cook has transformed his theoretical concerns into building projects such as the much feted Kunsthaus in Graz, Germany - designed in conjunction with Colin Fournier (the two are known collectively as Spacelab). Cook is currently Professor of Architecture at London University's Bartlett School of Architecture and has been a visiting professor and critic at universities world-wide.
This year's British exhibition at the IX International Biennale of Architecture in Venice will be curated by Peter Cook. It will be held at the British Pavilion, Giardini di Castello, and Cook will present an exhibition of nine British architectural practices (all new to the British Pavilion) arguing that British architecture's strength lies in the proliferation of ideas and methodologies, often at cross-purposes with one another. Ian Ritchie, Kathryn Findlay, Future Systems, Ron Arad, Caruso St. John, CJ Lim, Richard Murphy, John Pawson and Cook himself, working with Gavin Robotham, are the practices that will be represented.
INTERVIEW
Can you describe what you're planning for this year's British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale?
I've been involved in previous Biennales as an exhibitor, but I was struck in the past that a lot of stuff being exhibited was very obscure. Although it's a wonderful meeting place, in a way it can all be very obscure. So, for this year's Biennale I thought, 'let's present the British scene as a series of different voices, some of which are contradictory and some of which even I don't approve of myself (I'm not saying which ones!)' I also wanted to present architects who hadn't exhibited at the British Pavilion before. This eliminated Will Alsop and Zaha Hadid, which from every other point of view I would have included - as I believe that they're probably the best architects working in London today.
But all the people in there are tremendous designers and that for me is the bottom line. That's my criteria. We're presenting it like a collage of very different people. I wanted it to be a cacophony - an exchange, a contradiction and layering of ideas. So, for example you have Caruso St John alongside Future Systems - the two couldn't be more different, could they?
And Kathryn Findlay does very particular and original work that is very different from the value system that Ian Ritchie comes from. It just so happens that if you were to scratch around, you'll find that several of the architects exhibiting are former students of mine - but you would be quite surprised if you knew which ones they were. Actually, Ron Arad, CJ Lim, Kathryn Findlay, and Peter St John are former students of mine but they are all very different from each other.
At the moment I'm preparing to interview each of the participants on video tape. So, not only will you go into the Pavilion building and see nine different visual presentations but there will be nine different conversations going on. I want to capture the character, atmosphere and even paranoias of each person. I've got an hour with each of them and I'm going to try and get them to declare their hand. I want to get the essence of each person and to get them to show something they haven't shown before. And we're also trying to make the pavilion naughtier than it's been. We're sexing it up a bit!
Are there any of this year's exhibitors that you particularly identify with? The energy, enthusiasm, experimentalism and polemical nature of CJ Lim's work, brings to mind the spirit of Archigram?
CJ Lim was a student of mine in the 1980's and he's been teaching with us for the last 14 years. He's the one I see down the corridor, and yes we do share an enthusiasm and energy. But Ron Arad, I've known even longer - I met my wife through him, and I think there are parallels between us. And Jan Kaplicky of Future Systems I met when he arrived in England over 30 years ago, and we have a lot in common. John Pawson I know the least but I've been watching him out the corner of my eye for a long time now!
In a recent interview Richard Murphy intimated to me that he thinks he is perhaps the most traditional of the representatives?
I remember coming up to Scotland and thinking he's a really, really good designer and maybe out on a limb a bit. He's maybe more traditional but not boring traditional - he's quite quirky actually.
As curator of the official British exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale, recent RIBA Gold Medallist, and Chair of the Bartlett School of Architecture, you might be perceived as part of the 'Establishment' these days, despite having built a reputation as something of an avant garde, even subversive, 'Anti-Establishment' figure?
I don't think I'm establishment! There are still a lot of establishment areas that still regard me as a maverick. The English scene is made up of tolerated levels of eccentricity and in a way that's a bit dangerous as it's a case of 'you can do that but you can't do that'.
You're given little props of power and influence, although whether you really have power or influence is another matter. Not that one wants power but one does want influence, and I still don't think I'm very influential in the areas that really matter. I've still never built anything in England. I'm now beginning to build things but as yet nothing in the UK.
The Archigram exhibition, which has been trotting around the world for nine years, also took more effort, and more hustling to get it shown in London than in anywhere else. I think there's still some resistance to what I do in the UK.
There was a sort of bewilderment amongst the establishment about the fact that I could write sensibly and that I could also teach lots of different stuff. Much later there was a sense of bewilderment when I became known as somebody who drew things. Now there's a bewilderment that I can actually build as well.
I think many opinion formers and legislators believe that you should sit in a specific little box: if you are an academic you sit in your academic box; if you are polemical you sit in your polemical box; if you are a drawer you sit in the art box, and if you build things you sit in the building box. If you do several of these things then it becomes bewildering for them.
So this was why there was some surprise when we built the Kunsthaus in Graz.
With the completion of the Kunsthaus, Graz, do you now feel vindicated?
Yes, it was an important achievement in terms of vindicating myself. Writing and drawing is one thing, but once you start actually building, then you occupy a different piece of history. Given the mandate to do something is important and I think the Kunsthaus is an important complimentary achievement. It vindicates a whole lot of other things that would otherwise have been written off. And I've noticed people's perception of me has changed. I would have loved to have built something like this a bit earlier, though.
I recently bumped into Rem Koolhaas in the street in London and we were talking about all the people we knew at the Architectural Association. Rem said that it's amazing really that we were all written off as wankers, but look at what we're all doing now - we've now all built and really rather well. So, what do the establishment do now? When you can't be written off as a theorist or a drawer, when you actually do it, what then? The middle ground people are caught on one leg again!
How do you follow the remarkable Kunsthaus, Graz?
I've just found out that I've been commissioned to design part of a social housing project in Madrid and I'm very excited about this. In terms of the commission, the client is the City of Madrid and architects such as Toyo Ito and MVRDV are also involved. I've done social housing in Berlin before, and I also did social housing for Taylor Woodrow, when I worked for them. Although one can't be totally flamboyant with social housing, I love it, and this is a great opportunity to exercise my thoughts.
Is this your ideal architectural scenario?
Actually, my ideal scenario is to have a kind of Think Tank. I'd like to have a group of people around me pitching up ideas, and doing the odd building as a result. I'd like us to come up with ideas and solutions about how to rescue cities for example, or look at issues such as transportation.
I was thinking of this because I retire as full time professor from the Bartlett and I'm doing more building work now. So, I was wondering how I could relate the two disciplines in a meaningful way. And I'd really like to do it this way, by having this Think Tank. I don't know if I can pull it off though?
It would also be nice to have time to sit down and work on ideas and designs rather than buzzing about all over the place. I've been in architecture schools for nearly 40 years. I've got mixed feelings about scaling down the teaching, but in the last nine days I've been on 8 aeroplanes. When I got the job at the Bartlett I had just remarried, and I thought 'great, maybe now I'll be in one place', but I've actually been travelling more. And I don't enjoy it at all. All the shopping I do is at airports, it's the only chance I get.
I bought this suit, this bag;everything I've got with me just now, is from an airport!
You are saying that you are busier and certainly more in demand than ever. Do you think that the Peter Cook renaissance might have something to do with your ideas reflecting the prevailing architectural zeitgeist?
The zeitgeist goes in waves. For a period - about fifteen years ago - I was out in the cold and I could have done with the support at that time. We could have done a lot then. I feel irked by the resistance I still feel is aimed towards me, particularly on the part of some English journalists. They basically don't like the fact that I'm still optimistic.
It seems to irritate them that I still keep at it. I think it's perhaps the cheerfulness of the work, the 'buzz-iness', the 'go-iness'. I think they think that I ought to be more worthy and modest and realistic. And I have a pet aversion to this. I think they may also not like the internationalist aspect of what I do. My network of friends and allies are very international and not particularly English.
An interesting fact is that when we were at the opening of the Kunsthaus Graz, I was told (by a gossip) that in some journalistic quarters, instruction was sent out to rubbish our building. There's a lot of discussion, particularly relating to 'blob' architecture vis a vis rational (minimalist) architecture.
People like myself, and Future Systems for example, we all get lumped together. And although we have our own personal differences, we're known as the terrible blob people. It's quite amusing. But I'd rather be with the Blobbies than the Boring Farts!
You mention that there is a strong internationalist aspect to what you do, however isn't your work also quintessentially English?
Yes, I would agree that there is a strong Englishness about my work. But the irony is that my close personal friends are non English people. Per Kartvedt, one of my greatest friends is Norwegian, and my wife is Israeli. Even the people at the Bartlett who are close to me are Portugese, German, Austrian and South American. I like these people because they're more open, and they're not stuck with this terrible English Puritanism.
I read this autobiography of John Cleese and he made the point that most of his humour came out of an attack on the background that he came out of. Although he attacks it in an English way, it is still nevertheless an attack on pious, lower middle-class English provincials - an attack on his parents and their value systems.
I don't think my attack would be as vicious as that, but I come from an English provincial background too. In a way Archigram was an attack on the comfortableness of English society. And I'm still reacting to this, and still in an English way. My humour and language is framed by an Englishness, but I'm still irritated by it.
Although I love returning to London, I do think that we have a tremendously limited culture in a way. We produce so many innovative people, but look what happens to them? There's this prevailing belief that they should keep their head below the parapet, and be a nice chap - or the female version of a nice chap. I'm not as bitter as John Cleese, but there are actually elements of similar reactions in my work. But I keep the bitterness very well hidden!
You have just delivered the keynote lecture at the inaugural Lighthouse Achievement Award in Glasgow. How do you feel about this award and the prevailing awards culture in general? Bearing in mind that you have received quite a few, yourself, recently?!
I therefore have to be in favour of them then, don't I?!!!!! What can I say?! Very occasionally awards go to people who know lots of the right people, but usually the award winner has something that the others don't have. But the danger is that awards can be read into too much by the outside world.
I've made a big deal of the fact that I've chosen Kathryn Findlay to be in the British Pavilion this year. People might ask, 'is it because she's small and red haired and Scottish, or because she worked in Japan?' At which I'd have to then say, 'No, it's because she's talented'. People can read too much into awards, but they always will. Once you start giving awards for symbolic reasons then you're on a sticky wicket.
I'd rather give awards for talent, like GLAS, the Lighthouse Achievement Awards winners.
Finally, what are your thoughts on GLAS?
I didn't know until today that GLAS came from Strathclyde University. What's more they are a product of a very creative period in Strathclyde's University's history - not least to do with my friend Professor Per Kartvedt. Their interests are a lot more political than mine. They are much more to do with the city and the streets, and in that way they remind me of the Paris Radicals of 1968.
I think the fact that GLAS have won the award is interesting, as it's a finger to the Scottish Establishment. It's also interesting that the medal has gone to the 'grubbier' of the two Glasgow schools. I don't mind if you keep these comments in, it might stir up some interesting debate!
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