Archigram assessed.

ARCHIGRAM, ARCHITECTURE WITHOUT ARCHITECTURE

By Simon Sadler London: MIT Press. 2005. [pounds sterling]22.95 (paperback only)

A monograph appraisal of the Archigram group has long been awaited, as the work of the group itself continues to be published and repackaged across the world. The group's ideas, and the 1990s travelling show which marked the re-emergence of Archigram ideas as powerful influencers on contemporary architecture, have now been placed in a cultural and architectural context by an English author far too young to have fallen under the spell either of Archigram or of the 1960s--at least first time round.

Simon Sadler cut his teeth on the cultural avant garde of the 1960s and '70s with his well received book, The Situationist City. Now teaching in California, he started to research Archigram at the Open University in 1994: clearly this is to some extent a labour of love. The story and context he assesses is split into four parts, broadly chronological, and each judiciously illustrated, mainly from the diaspora which is the Archigram archive (moves are afoot to digitise and combine it in one place). It is not a warts and all publication, eschewing the personal in favour of analysing the broad cultural movements which paralleled or post-date Archigram, launched let us remember in 1961--pre-Beatles, pre Harold Wilson's first Labour government, even (just) pre-dating Private Eye.

Sadler, an admirer of the achievements and legacies of the group, is far from uncritical. He points to the weaknesses and contradictions in some of its work and the attitudes it. represented. He cites contemporary criticism, which increased as the glory years of the '60s began to fade. Praise and criticism alike are properly footnoted.

For those who are familiar with the work of Archigram, this monograph will put its project into a wider European context. For others it will act as an excellent introduction, providing ample evidence for the welcome awarding of the RIBA Gold Medal in 2002. Partly through their built and unbuilt work, and just as much through their subsequent teaching, the members of Archigram were responsible for an architectural movement which refused admirably to fall into the dreary pigeon-holes of British political and cultural establishments of the era. New Left students distrusted the debt to US-led technology, ecologists were dismayed at the ethos of personal fun, old Moderns were always suspicious of the fantasy graphics. They missed the point; Sadler doesn't.