ABSTRACT
Archigram were a group. Previous generations of English architects may have hung out together in the French House or shared tea in the afternoon, but they were not a group. A group like a band, in the 1960s, where the collective effort was more than the sum of the individual parts (of course this brings immediate focus on those individual parts). They were collectively awarded the RIBA Gold Medal in 2003, yet since their inception in 1961, they had effectively built nothing but a small adventure playground in Milton Keynes, now demolished, an irony not lost on anybody at the celebration. Even David Greene, the so-called poet of the group, confessed from the platform: ‘I’m not sure the RIBA know what they’ve done’.
