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Peter Cook: Cities

Past exhibition
18 July - 16 September 2023 London
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Overview
All Wall, 2023
All Wall, 2023

Richard Saltoun Gallery is honoured to present the visionary work of British architect Sir Peter Cook. Drawing on his work over the past 60 years, the exhibition features a site-specific architectural environment produced especially for the gallery, together with a selection of drawings and paintings that trace the radical conceptual vision underpinning the artist’s oeuvre. Visitors are invited to have a ‘visual discussion’ about cities: cities reimagined and dismembered, and cities climbing over themselves to become new forms. 

 

The exhibition coincides with the 60-year anniversary of the exhibition Living City at the ICA, at that time on the same street as Richard Saltoun Gallery. In Living City Peter Cook, together with Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb – who were shortly after to become formally known as the celebrated neo-futurist architectural group, Archigram - extolled the transience and serendipity of cities with hot images collaged into a three-dimensional triangulated framework. Archigram brought forward radical ideas that have continued to serve as inspiration around the world, including pioneers of high-tech architecture such as Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas. 

 

Since the 1960s, Cook has maintained an interest in the theoretical field of architecture and examining the future through the medium of drawing. By lifting the limitations of the physical world, drawing has freed him from the constraints of sites and economics, reinventing the look and function of cities through a range of unique, innovative designs. This becomes apparent in his ongoing series of works titled Arcadia, which he has produced continuously throughout his career, as well as one of his most notable projects, Plug-in City (also exhibited in ICA’s Living City). Developed between 1963 and 1966, these plans showed various iterations of prefabricated modular residences or ‘capsules’, modes of transportation, and other essential services that “plug in” to one central hyper structure.  In the 1970s these designs softened and started to involve layers and vegetation. A tendency to mix and discover hybrids of natural conditions mixed with the mechanical and artificial accelerated through the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, the extension of the inherited architectural vocabulary has become a major preoccupation, exemplified by the artist’s series of ongoing architectural projects with the Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP). 


As Cook writes, he is not concerned with whole cities nor whole projects, but with accumulated fragments and scrambled bits of inspiration. Yet the ‘City’ has consistently remained central to his explorations: it is the essence of conglomeration, of confrontation of the unlike with the unlike, of the potential of unexpected mixtures. Cities at Richard Saltoun Gallery marks the artist’s return to a private gallery, celebrating the breadth and revolutionary impact of his work on the architectural canon and beyond. 

 


 

Cities is designed by Cook Haffner Architecture Platform, a multidisciplinary and experimental architecture office with a focus on culture, the city, and how space functions. 

 

CHAP Design team: 

Curatorial and exhibition design: Sir Peter Cook and Cong Ding

Media and VR: Louis Peralta

 

Special thanks to Myy Tran and Mert Ozbolat for the sculpture

 

 

For press enquiries, email Sonja Teszler: sonja@richardsaltoun.com

 

Cities in the press

Exhibition review | The Architect's Newspaper

Exhibition review | stir world

Interview with Sir Peter Cook | designboom 

Exhibition review | Wallpaper

Exhibition review | Financial Times

Exhibition review | The Week

Exhibition mention | dezeen magazine

 
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Works
  • Peter COOK All Wall, 2023 Ink, colour pencil and watercolour on paper 50 x 50 cm Framed: 56 x 56 x 3.5 cm
    Peter COOK
    All Wall, 2023
    Ink, colour pencil and watercolour on paper
    50 x 50 cm
    Framed: 56 x 56 x 3.5 cm
  • Peter COOK, Swiss Cottage, 2010
    Peter COOK, Swiss Cottage, 2010
  • Peter COOK Arcadia A, 1977-78 Ink, colour pencil and watercolour on paper Framed: 85 x 127 cm
    Peter COOK
    Arcadia A, 1977-78
    Ink, colour pencil and watercolour on paper
    Framed: 85 x 127 cm
  • Peter COOK Plug-in City, 1964 Unique print, printed 2012 79 x 164 cm Framed: 82 x 168 cm
    Peter COOK
    Plug-in City, 1964
    Unique print, printed 2012
    79 x 164 cm
    Framed: 82 x 168 cm
Installation Views
  • Peter Cook Installation 1 2000Px
  • Peter Cook Installation 12 2000Px
  • Peter Cook Installation 22 2000Px
  • Peter Cook Installation 29 2000Px
Publications
  • Peter Cook

    Peter Cook

    Speculations | Signed copy 2022
    Hardcover 208 pages
    Publisher: Circa
    ISBN: 978-1-911422-39-6
    Dimensions: 26 x 26 cm
    Read more
News
  • Peter Cook

    Peter Cook

    In the Press | Stir World September 19, 2023
    John Jervis reflects on Richard Saltoun Gallery London's Peter Cook: Cities as a retrospective exhibition that coincides with the 60-year anniversary of Archigram’s first exhibition...
    Read more
Events
  • Peter Cook

    Peter Cook

    In-conversation with Paul Finch | London 5 Sep 2023
    THE EVENT STARTS AT 6PM Join us for an In-Conversation event with celebrated British architect, Sir Peter Cook, and programme director of the World Architecture Festival, Paul Finch, on the occasion of Cook's current exhibition Cities at Richard Saltoun Gallery. The conversation will touch on various stages of Cook's career from the early days of Archigram until today, and delve deeper into his projects and enduring interest in drawing within the field of architecture. RSVPs are now open here . Capacity at 50 people. Signed copies of the recent publication,...
    Read more

Artist page

  • Peter Cook

    Peter Cook

Back to Past exhibitions

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London W1S 4NS

 

RICHARD SALTOUN GALLERY| ROME

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info@richardsaltoun.com

 

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+39 06 86678 388

rome@richardsaltoun.com

 

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