Archigram Archive Archigram 檔案

The Archigram Archive consists of drawings, prints, ephemera, photographic material, videos and film, correspondence, project and exhibition files, and many other types of documents in a collection that represents nearly the entire output of the group. The archive is heavily focused on the group’s production in its primary years of 1961 to 1974, while also including related works from before and after this period. The archive contains all ten Archigram magazines and such iconic proposals as Sin Centre (1961–1963), Plug-In City (1964), Walking City (1964), Cushicle/Suitaloon (1966), Ideas Circus (1968), Instant City (1968), and the Monte Carlo entertainment centre (1969).

The core of the archive consists of between three thousand and four thousand drawings, prints, reproductions, and sketches of the over two hundred projects. Created before the advent of digital rendering, Archigram’s drawings were often made in sequential steps with multiple tools and techniques, including ink on trace, felt-tip pen, magic marker, airbrush, screen-printing, photocopying, offset duplication, Zip-A-Tone, and collage. Multiple iterations of a single drawing often exist, providing valuable insight into the process of creation. The archive illustrates the group’s use of some of the most innovative image-making techniques of their time, a period when Pop artists like Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, and Joe Tilson (who was especially influential on their work) were questioning notions of originality through various modes of appropriation and mechanical reproduction within a growing consumer culture.

The archive features the original artwork for the ten Archigram magazines (produced between 1961 and 1974 and numbered from one to nine-and-a-half) along with proof pages and printed copies. Also included are thousands of photographs, negatives, slides, and transparencies, which extensively document the group’s models, drawings, exhibitions, installations, and other projects. In addition, thousands of ‘backup slides’ are of particular note. When presenting their work, Archigram members had a practice of using two, and sometimes more, slide projectors. One would show an image of an Archigram project, while the other would project a related visual or cultural reference. The latter include a wide selection of images: monorails, hovercrafts, spaceships, suburban landscapes, James Bond, Marilyn Monroe, and much more besides. These backup slides form an important visual compendium of the popular and visual culture from which Archigram drew.

The archive also contains over four hundred videotapes, as well as film and audio cassettes, which include BBC segments on the group and its members, videos by Archigram, and the ‘Popular Pak’ film they showed in their section of the now-infamous Milan Triennale of 1968. Interviews and videos by and about figures in their circle, including Reyner Banham, Nigel Coates, and Will Alsop, are also featured. Finally, the archive includes correspondence, financial records, reports, brochures, catalogues, invitations, postcards, magazine articles, lecture notes, contracts, and miscellaneous materials. There is also an exhibition file for every Archigram exhibition from the 1990s until the 2010s.

M+ is committed to the preservation and to the arrangement and description of the Archigram Archive to the highest international standards. This is a substantial project that will take several years to complete. As sections of the archive are catalogued, they will be made available on the M+ Collections website. The selection of Archigram records currently available on the website gives a glimpse into the riches of this archive.

The Archigram Archive was preserved by Archigram member Dennis Crompton at his residence in London from the 1960s onwards. Some individual members had retained part of the archive but these were almost all taken into Dennis Crompton’s custody by the 2010s. Following the death of Ron Herron in 1994, the drawings attributed to him were removed by his heirs and remain in their custody. Some individual items have been sold to international museums—see the Related units of description section for details. In 2018 M+ acquired the entirety of the archive as it was then preserved by Dennis Crompton.

Arranged chronologically by project.

The archive contains copies of several works by Ron Herron, the originals of which are held by Ron Herron’s heirs.

The University of Westminster’s Archigram Archival Project has published online almost ten thousand digitised items from the Archigram Archive and Ron Herron’s drawings.

Several other museums hold individual items by Archigram. These are the V&A, London; the Frac Centre-Val de Loire, Orléans; the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Deutches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.