Architectures of the Technopolis: Archigram and the British High Tech

Comparing the work of Archigram and High-Tech architects thematically, this book explores the historical and cultural context of London to reveal their influences and interconnections and why two such radical groups emerged from a seemingly conservative city. This book examines the relationships between the work of Archigram and that of the British High-Tech architects, groups that were based in London and developing in the 1960s and 70s. While one group consisted of academics and artists known for their humour and eccentricity and the other were a group of deadly serious architects emerging to international proliference, this book argues that they shared uncannily similar impulses. There is the self-evident commonality of language: overblown machines, kits-of-parts of pieces and components, and a disintegration of building as object in favour of the constituent elements. Underlying both movements is a mutual, undying optimism in technological process and technological expression. Set within the rich history and culture of London, the book makes its comparisons by exploring central shared ideas: utopia, engineering, theatricality, infrastructure and narrative, and the iconography of war machinery.

Table of Contents:
1. Utopias Past to Politics Present: The Elusive Garden; 2. Drawing on Engineering: Authenticity and Its Detractors; 3. Urban Theatricality: Rhetoric, Gadgets, and the Monsters They Create; 4. Disjunction and Connection: Urban Infrastructures and their Great Narrative Constructs; 5. War and its Inscriptions: Iconography and Commemoration; Epilogue: Technology, Spectral Presence; Notes; Bibliography; Index

About the Author :
Annette Fierro is Associate Professor of Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Review :
'This provocative and adventurous book explores the emergence of High-Tech on the architecture scene in London from the 1950s onward, treating advanced building technology as not only a matter of engineering innovation but a form of cultural expression bound up with a specific time and place. Counterposing the irreverence of Archigram's ludic futurism to the pragmatics of large-scale corporate building practice, Fierro shows how much - paradoxically -- they shared, and how thoroughly they have transformed the iconography of architecture in the late-modern cityscape.' - Joan Ockman 'What is the relationship between paper architecture and the evolution of the built environment? Moving seamlessly from 1960s utopians movements such as Archigram to British high tech architecture and beyond, Annette Fierro offers a new and convincing take on this crucial question for the design disciplines.' - Antoine Picon, G. Ware Travelstead Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, Harvard University