This Is Tomorrow (1956)

“This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.

It has become an iconic exhibition notable not only for the arrival of the naming of Pop Art but also as a captured moment for the multi-disciplinary merging of the disciplines of art and architecture.

The exhibition included artists, architects, musicians and graphic designers working together in 12 teams—an example of multi-disciplinary collaboration that was still unusual. Each group took as their starting point the human senses and the theme of habitation.

The exhibition catalogue featured essays by Reyner Banham and Lawrence Alloway. McHale wrote the text for the page Are they Cultured? and it was intended to be featured with the McHale designed collage that got mispaginated in the catalogue.”

Edited by Theo Grosby
Designed by Edward Wright

Commentary: this is tomorrow 2 (2008), James Lingwood (2009).
Reinterpretation (2019)
Wikipedia

HTML (the website is down as of 2019-3-15)

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

PDF, PDF (11 MB, updated on 2016-5-7)

Rainey, Poggi, Wittman (eds.): Futurism: An Anthology (2009)

“In 1909, F.T. Marinetti published his incendiary Futurist Manifesto, proclaiming, “We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!!” and “There, on the earth, the earliest dawn!” Intent on delivering Italy from “its fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians,” the Futurists imagined that art, architecture, literature, and music would function like a machine, transforming the world rather than merely reflecting it. But within a decade, Futurism’s utopian ambitions were being wedded to Fascist politics, an alliance that would tragically mar its reputation in the century to follow.

Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism, this is the most complete anthology of Futurist manifestos, poems, plays, and images ever to bepublished in English, spanning from 1909 to 1944. Now, amidst another era of unprecedented technological change and cultural crisis, is a pivotal moment to reevaluate Futurism and its haunting legacy for Western civilization.”

Editors Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, Laura Wittman
Publisher Yale University Press, 2009
Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Modernity
ISBN 0300088752, 9780300088755
604 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-9-23)