Peter Cook

(b Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 22 Oct 1936). English architect, teacher and critic. He studied architecture at the Bournemouth College of Art (1953-8) and at the Architectural Association, London (1958-60), where his teachers included James Gowan, John Killick and Peter Smithson. While working in the office of James Cubitt and Partners (1960-62) he met David Greene (b 1937), and, beginning in 1960, they produced the first of nine issues of the magazine Archigram. An ARCHIGRAM group was formed with other recently graduated young architects, including Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Ron Herron and Mike Webb, who came together after Cook had joined the Taylor Woodrow Design Office in 1962. Archigram magazine was the group's most important outlet, but a wider audience was also sought through exhibitions, for example the Living City exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London (June 1963); through such events as the International Dialogue of Experimental Architecture, Folkestone (June 1966), a seminal conference for the architectural progressives; and through lecturing and teaching. Cook started teaching at the Architectural Association in 1964.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

British architect much influenced by Cedric Price, and a founder of Archigram. With Colin Fournier and Archigram he won the competition for an Arts and Leisure complex in Monte Carlo in 1969, but this was never realized. Cook subsequently produced a series of theoretical projects (some with Christine Hawley), and a few examples of built work, notably a housing scheme in Berlin. More recently, again with Fournier, he designed the new Kunsthaus (Art Gallery) in Graz, Austria (2000–3), an example of Biomorphic or Zoömorphic architecture, known as the ‘friendly alien’ (a form, perhaps of the Blobismus type). For a gallery the skylights (or ‘nozzles’ as the architects term them) do not provide much light, and they suggest the carapace of some prehistoric creature rather than an adequate response to what the building is to be used for.

Bibliography

• Architectural Review, ccxv/1285 (Mar. 2004), 44–53
• Building Design, 1595 (26 September 2003), 12–15
• P. Cook (1970)
• P. Cook et al. (eds.) (1999)
• Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

For other persons named Peter Cook, see Peter Cook (disambiguation).

2009 portrait of Sir Peter Cook

Sir Peter Cook, FRIBA (born 1936 in Southend, Essex) is a notable English architect, teacher and writer about architecture.

From 1953 to 1958, he studied architecture at Bournemouth College of Art, and then moved to the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, graduating in 1960. He later returned to the AA as a teacher.

While working in the office of James Cubitt & Partners, Cook was one of the founding members of the influential Archigram group in the 1960s. In 1969 he received a grant from the Graham Foundation for work done with Archigram.

He was Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, from 1970 to 1972.

He was appointed Life Professor at the Städelschule (Art Academy) of Frankfurt in 1984, helping establish its reputation as one of the leading German architecture schools.

He later (1990) became Professor of Architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, a position from which he retired in 2005.

Contents 1 Awards and honours 2 Work 3 References 4 External links

Awards and honours

In 2002, Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Archigram the Royal Gold Medal for architecture. In 2004, he was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize with Colin Fournier for the Kunsthaus Graz. In 2007, he was made a Knight Bachelor in the Queen's birthday honours.

Work

• Trondheim Library, with Christine Hawley, 1977
• Housing at Lutzowplatz, Berlin, 1989
• Canteen Block HbK, Frankfurt, 1989-92
• Pavilion for the Botanical Garden, Osaka, Japan 1990
• Museum of Antiquities in Bad Deutsches Altenberg, Austria,with Christine Hawley, 1995
• Kunsthaus Graz (2003) runner up for the Stirling Prize
• 2012 London Olympic Stadium

References

• Interview with Peter Cook on Archinect - Conversation with Peter Cook on the State of Things
• Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture without Architecture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005 [1]
• Interview with Designboom

External links

• The Bartlett: Peter Cook
• Arcspace: Kunsthaus Graz
• Knighthood: Peter Cook (06/2007)
• Archinect interview (06/2008)
• Architectural Record interview (2007)
• RA interview (2005)
• Designboom interview (09/2002)
• Design Museum: Archigram
• CRAB Studio

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