The iconic experimental magazine, Archigram, is about to make its return to contemporary culture with a forthcoming facsimile boxed edition of all 9½ original issues, nine of which can be found in the Frances Loeb Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD).
The facsimile edition, edited and featuring essays by Peter Cook, one of the original founders and 2015 Kenzō Tange Visiting Professor at the GSD, along with essays by David Grahame Shane and Reyner Banham, promises to “faithfully reproduce” the elements that made the magazine such a joy to read: “flyers, pockets, a pop-up centerfold, posters, gatefolds, and an electronic resistor.” Publisher artbook also notes that ths edition includes some new material: a glossary index, a “scrapbook of previously unseen archival images,” and bibliographies.
Archigram was first published in 1961 after Peter Cook, David Greene, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron, and Mike Webb gathered to form a collective that challenged mainstream design trends towards modernism. Together, for nearly a decade, they created speculative designs, exhibits, and writing, along with Archigram. The final half issue (a single page) was published in 1974.
Drawing from early twentieth century groups such as the Dadaists who distributed handmade packets that would one day be known as “zines,” the Archigram collective used collage, woodcut prints, and stapled pages, photocopying early issues for distribution and creating more complex design elements that mirrored the era’s new technologies, consumerism, and Pop Art. Together, the group developed a new vision for architecture that centered avant-garde aesthetics, with its futuristic designs and sense of play.
One of their most famous magazine issues featured Ron Herron’s “Walking City”—building units set on moveable legs that, like scurrying beetles, allow dwellers to move to necessary resources and communities. The “Zoom” issue helped the group find a broader audience, writes GSD archivist Ines Zalduendo, when Reyner Banham brought six copies from England to the US, where it landed a spot in Architectural Record. “It is easy to see how this issue,” Zalduendo notes in the archive’s collection record, “which took inspiration from Roy Lichtenstein and sci-fi comics, successfully conveyed the group’s characteristic rallying against high modernist culture.”
Zalduendo acquired the extremely rare Archigram collection—one of only three in the world—in 2019 for the GSD archives, where visitors can experience the zine firsthand. Also included in the collection are ephemera from the group, such as greeting cards, a hand-colored print of “Block City,” flyers, and posters.
In December 2024, Cook published a tenth issue of the magazine, available online, with contributors including Marjan Colletti and Klein Dytham, among others. For those who want to build their own Archigram archive, the forthcoming facsimile edition offers consumers the same tactile delights as the originals—along with the nostalgia of the group’s 1960s and ’70s radical design sensibilities that changed the course of architecture.