Nowadays business deals have architects. Government policies have architects. There are even architects of sports victories. But architecture hasn't always permeated social consciousness, nor language.
An exhibition that opened yesterday at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961-1974, looks back to a major British movement that opened up architecture in these new ways and also helped define a 1960s futuristic aesthetic applied by others to Bond villains' headquarters, Monty Python's psychedelic animation and the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.
Archigram was founded as a magazine in 1961 by six London architects and then went on to spawn a movement. The magazine's pages were filled with manifestos, collaged space comics and fantastical drawings of an untold number of architectural projects, not one of which was ever built. It was a mod revolution that wanted to subvert stodgy urban landscapes with "gasket homes," "seaside bubbles," "underwater cities" and even an oil platform to be placed above Trafalgar Square.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
"We were designing non-houses, non-cities, non-building, non-places," said Peter Cook, one of Archigram's four surviving members and one of three in Taipei for the show's opening.
The designs were "anti-projects," and by the late 1960s they were part of the aesthetic and ideology of the "anti-establishment" movement. As architecture, the designs were, by and large, so imaginative that they were unbuildable. But they were imbued with a desire to dissolve cities, their existing hierarchies and their concrete exoskeletons. The term "archigram" was created by combining "architecture" with "telegram" and implied mobility, the lack of which they saw as an urban flaw to be rectified. So they invented "walking cities" that had legs and could move, "plug-in cities" that were interchangeable and "expendable place pads" as temporary, ad hoc homes. Drawings often called on materials that were inflatable, collapsible and not there when not needed. It was a vision of a society in flux.
In TFAM's galleries, these ideas are displayed in the form of more than 300 drawings, 14 architectural models and two extensive installations. Cook called it the second largest exhibition they've ever held in more than a decade of touring with their collection. One installation recreates a never-built 1969 design that fills a gallery with a Teletubby-like setting of astroturf, plastic flowers and inflatable dome homes. The second is a barrage of projected images, including a dozen slide projectors, video projectors and four television monitors.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
Much as American pop art is credited with bridging the gap between art and media, Archigram is credited with recognizing the confluence of architecture and advertising. (Imagine, for example, New York's Times Square or the Taipei Main Station MRT complex without ads ? it's virtually impossible because the ads are so central to what they are.)
Archigram member Michael Webb, also in Taipei for the opening, said that one of the things they realized was that "the labelling no longer applies," because in a dynamic environment, spaces can be used for anything. Advertisers discovered this long ago. As an example, Webb brought up the example of a New York commuter, a lawyer, who in a New York Times article claimed to actually enjoy the hours of traffic jams on his weekend commute because by employing a cell phone and a laptop computer sitting next to him in the passenger seat, it was the only time he could work without interruption.
"So you have this fellow doing all his work in an SUV, and still they build these office buildings everywhere. It doesn't work anymore, and it's still happening," said Webb.
"That's why we think the spirit of Archigram is still very much alive."
Archigram is on display through June 8 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館) located at 181, Sec. 3, Chungshan N. Rd. (北市中山北路三段181號). Hours are 9:30am to 5:30pm Tuesday to Sunday.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and