As a founder member of the visionary group Archigram, in the early 1960s, Peter Cook (1936-) helped to project radically new possibilities for architecture. Archigram mixed Pop Art’s fascination with found objects with emerging technical possibilities to imagine an architecture where the necessary guts of a building determined its imagery. With the flamboyance of a natural showman, Cook turned his fascination with ‘the puzzlement of the strange thing’ into spectacles. As an art-impresario at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1969-71), and Art Net, which he established and directed from 1972-9, he introduced new ideas and people to London audiences, and stimulated discussions about the nature of art and contemporary culture. Cook has built in Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Osaka and Nagoya. However, it was with the construction of his arts building, the Kunsthaus Graz (aka ‘The Friendly Alien’) designed with Colin Fournier and completed in 2003, that Cook’s speculations on architecture and the concept of the buildable were finally manifested in a complex public building. His first building in the UK, a drawing studio at the Arts University Bournemouth, was opened by Zaha Hadid in 2016. Cook is also the pre-eminent architectural educator in the UK. He was for many years an influential Unit Master at the Architectural Association (AA), where he had completed his own studies. Cook is also a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London, and his professorships include those of the Royal Academy, London and the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste (Städelschule) in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. In 2007, he was awarded a knighthood for his services to architecture and teaching. He is also a Royal Academician and a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic. In 2004, his achievements with Archigram were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects, when the group was awarded the Royal Gold Medal.
