DESIGNBOOM IN DISCUSSION WITH SIR PETER COOK
‘I don’t actually agree with the concept of utopianism,’ Sir Peter Cook informs designboom editor-in-chief, Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou, during a live conversation at the stage of the Basque Country International Architecture Biennial, Mugak/2025.
Curated by designer, researcher, and curator María Arana Zubiate, the biennial unfolds under the style of Castles in the Air, or How to Construct Paradise Today, checking out whether visionary thinking still has a location in an age dominated by pragmatism. The famous architect and co-founder of Archigram participates in the exhibition with two jobs– Plug-in City from 1964 and the more current Filter City– presented as part of the area Escape Paradises together with New Babylon by Constant, and Exodus and Hyperbuilding by Rapid Eye Movement Koolhaas.
Although a number of his jobs, including the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz, Austria, and the Illustration Studio for Arts University Bournemouth, have actually been recognized, Cook’s crucial tool remains drawing. Through fantastical, vibrant illustrations that reveal his visionary concepts of what cities could look like, he has actually affected and influenced architecture and architectural thinking over the previous 6 years.
Sir Peter Cook and Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou at the phase of Mugak/2025 from’pie-in-the-skY plans’ to architectural reality The British architect does not view the fictional visions of his drawings as something separate to what might be buildable. ‘It is usual to say that there is the utopian world, and put a box around it, and then there’s the real world, ‘he discusses during our discussion. ‘In a great deal of architecture schools, the professor will state, do not take a look at that, it’s simply a utopian concept, it has absolutely nothing to do with what can be done. And I think teachers are typically the worst wrongdoers, because the fact that it might be buildable
makes them a little nervous. What do we inform the kids then?”I do not think there’s any dividing line. One day, I was talking in the street with Rapid eye movement Koolhaas, who used to live near me, and we were going through all the people we kept in mind at the Architectural Association who had actually been dismissed, including ourselves, as drawers. Drawing individuals who made these pie-in-the-sky plans. And we noted about 20 of them, including ourselves, who had actually constructed. However it was really comfortable to state there’s paradise, and then there appertains building.’
Here, Prepare returns to a recurring style in his thinking, that the distance in between speculation and building and construction is far thinner than many assume.‘Had something like the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz been shown as an illustration, people would state, ah, yes, but it’s not a real building. And after that it’s there, you can walk inside it, have a pee inside it, and put an exhibit inside it. It’s a structure, like structures are.
You can state that there are certain parts of it that are really typical, but there is no dividing line. And I still feel that rather emphatically. Just as it entertained me to do the drawing that showed the Play Structure in London as a piece of Instant City. Since you could have taken that structure, put it in the Instant City drawing and say, oh, yes, that’s just a piece of it. I‘m not stating definitely every drawing is 100% buildable, but it’s a bloody sight more buildable than individuals like to offer it space for. And I think the connection is necessary.’
Kunsthaus Graz, bird’s -eye view|image Zepp-Cam. 2004/Graz, Austria DRAWING AS CONTINUUM, NOT ESCAPE Prepare consistently goes back to the danger of separating speculative work from architectural practice.’If you categorize it as utopian and after that state that this is something and that is another, it ends up being very, extremely dangerous,’ he warns. History, he observes, is full of ideas as soon as dismissed as dream that eventually emerged. ‘There’s a whole history throughout civilization of things that were dreams that all of a sudden someone was amazed by and stated, oh, bloody hell, it’s there,’ he includes.
For Cook, the value of speculative work lies precisely in its distance to reality. ‘Most of the structures, even the sort of weirder things or creative things, have a plan of parts,’ he points out. Whether placing structures into a hillside or drawing something almost abstract, he insists he always brings a clear sense of ‘the size of it and how you would access it and what you would make it from.‘ His refusal to separate visionary thinking from architectural logic corresponds: ‘There is no dividing line.’
Plug-In City versus Kunsthaus Graz, drawing versus pavilion– for Cook, these are variations of the exact same continuum. Even jobs that appear whimsical are rooted in architectural intent. This mindset extends to how he approaches teaching. He sees drawing as a space for testing architectural thinking. ‘We’re private investigators,’ he informs us. ‘And you can investigate with a paintbrush or with a computer or with a determining rod … we’re still in the doing-it company.’
Kunsthaus Graz, view from the Schlossberg|image Universalmuseum Joanneum/N. Lackner OPTIMISM, COMPUTATION, AND THE FUTURE When the discussion shifts to the future and whether optimism is still appropriate, Cook’s reaction is instant:’Oh, absolutely.’However he takes care to identify optimism from naivety. He explains the pandemic as having actually ended up being ‘a terrific excuse for gloomers,’ sustaining a culture of resignation he discovers unhelpful. Instead, he puts his hopes in the emerging generation of computational designers. ‘The people who are doing terrific things with computational architecture do have the fire in their eyes. They still have the fire in their eyes.’ Geographically, he sees momentum moving away from Europe. ‘I believe the brand-new architecture is originating from the far East,’ he suggests. ‘Not because of cultural ideology, but due to the fact that they seem not quite so anxious.’
In action to the concern about whether his works reflect escapism, Prepare withstands the idea. ‘There might be, but I would see that as a weakness,’ he replies. For him, these illustrations are probes into alternative lifestyles. His reflections wander towards the in-between areas of the metropolitan material, suburbs, valley towns, and industrial sheds threading through landscapes. ‘There are many types of utopia … numerous forms of the device directed towards an idea,’ he keeps in mind.
What captivates him is how environments stitch themselves together: ‘The concept of how you knit a city interests me tremendously.’ He describes flying over Spain, observing towns splintering into ‘shed, shed, shed,’ and becomes animated about the hidden intelligence within Chinese shophouses: ‘Is it a store? Is it a market? Is it family? Is it extended?’ These hybrid conditions, he argues, are not paradises at all but the product of architecture itself: ‘We remain in the let’s-see-how-you-do-it company.’
Filter City (2020s)|ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm|© Peter Cook’LOOK, APPEARANCE, LOOK’: recommendations for the next generation Invited to share what guidance he would provide to a more youthful generation intent on thinking of beyond the normal, Prepare responses without doubt:’Look. I constantly state appearance.’He illustrates the point with an anecdote about a talented AA student developing a bus station from an American recommendation rather than her own day-to-day commute. ‘Do you remember getting off the bus?’ he had actually asked her, a question that, for him, exposes how easily designers depend on ‘packaged info’ rather of lived experience.
Real understanding, he insists, comes from mindful observation, noticing how ‘the houses on the cliff’ shift into ‘a wise town,’ where ‘the tourists don’t go,’ and ‘where the backyard market’ hides. ‘It pertains to looking,’ he highlights. ‘The keyword is look. Look, look, look. Watch how you get out of the bus if you’re going to create a bus station. Not what it informs you in a manual.’
Listening to Cook, it becomes clear that paradise isn’t in other places. It sits in the sketchbook, in the act of looking, in the flash when a drawing becomes a proposition. The future of architecture is everything about staying curious enough to keep on drawing.
Sir Peter Cook reinvented contemporary architecture with visionary tasks< img src= "image/gif; base64, R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP/// yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7"alt= "' I don't agree with the idea of paradise': sir peter cook on optimism and the power of drawing-6" width="818"height ="614"data-src ="https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/peter-cook-cities-exhibition-richard-saltoun-gallery-designboom-22.jpg"/ > setup view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 © the artist|image courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome