Simon Sadler: Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (2005)

“In the 1960s, the architects of Britain’s Archigram group and Archigram magazine turned away from conventional architecture to propose cities that move and houses worn like suits of clothes. In drawings inspired by pop art and psychedelia, architecture floated away, tethered by wires, gantries, tubes, and trucks. In Archigram: Architecture without Architecture, Simon Sadler argues that Archigram’s sense of fun takes its place beside the other cultural agitants of the 1960s, originating attitudes and techniques that became standard for architects rethinking social space and building technology. The Archigram style was assembled from the Apollo missions, constructivism, biology, manufacturing, electronics, and popular culture, inspiring an architectural movement—High Tech—and influencing the postmodern and deconstructivist trends of the late twentieth century.

Although most Archigram projects were at the limits of possibility and remained unbuilt, the six architects at the center of the movement, Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron, and Michael Webb, became a focal point for the architectural avant-garde, because they redefined the purpose of architecture. Countering the habitual building practice of setting walls and spaces in place, Archigram architects wanted to provide the equipment for amplified living, and they welcomed any cultural rearrangements that would ensue. Archigram: Architecture without Architecture—the first full-length critical and historical account of the Archigram phenomenon—traces Archigram from its rediscovery of early modernist verve through its courting of students, to its ascent to international notoriety for advocating the “disappearance of architecture.””

Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262693224, 9780262693226
242 pages

Publisher

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Caroline Cahm: Kropotkin. And the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, 1872-1886 (2002)

This major study of Peter Kropotkin sets him firmly in the context of the development of the European anarchist movement as the man who became, after Bakunin’s death, their chief exponent of anarchist ideas. It traces the origins and development of his ideas and revolutionary practice from 1872 to 1886, and assesses the subsequent influence of his life and work upon European radical and socialist movements. Dr Cahm analyses Kropotkin’s role in the transformation of Bakunin’s anti-authoritarian socialism, and shows how two principal types of revolutionary action emerge from anarchist efforts to develop clear alternatives to the parliamentary strategies of social democrats; one based on the activity of individuals and small groups, the other related to large-scale collective action.

Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2002
ISBN 0521891574, 9780521891578
388 pages

publisher
google books

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Andreas Huyssen: After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (1986)

Huyssen argues that postmodernism cannot be regarded as a radical break with the past, as it is deeply indebted to that other trend within the culture of modernity—the historical avant-garde.

Publisher Indiana University Press, 1986
Theories of representation and difference
ISBN 0253203996, 9780253203991
244 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (no OCR; updated on 2012-7-18)