Output details

Archigram Archival Project

RESEARCH CONTENT AND PROCESS

--Description--

The Archigram Archival Project makes the works of the seminal experimental architectural group Archigram freely available online. It creates a new kind of architectural resource, bringing together privately owned material held across the world in an entirely digital archive. It was produced by the authors as part of University of Westminster’s EXP (Experimental Practice) Research Group, in collaboration with Archigram and their heirs and with the Centre for Parallel Computing in Westminster’s School of Electronics and Computer Science.

--Questions--

The project has three distinct but interlinked elements:

1. To assess, catalogue and present the vast range of Archigram's prolific and varied work, of which only a small portion was previously available;

2. To provide reflective academic material on Archigram and on the wider picture of their work being presented;

3. To develop a new type of online archive, suitable for both academic researchers and casual browsers.

These relate to Archigram's own polemic about fun-based learning and about new technologies replacing building-based institutions. The project includes an essay by the authors on the relationship between the archive and the material contained within.

--Methods--

The project hybridises: archival and editorial methods for the recovery, presentation and contextualisation of Archigram's work; digital web design; and the provision of reflective academic and scholarly material.

--Dissemination--

Online website resource presented in numerous lectures and seminars. The resource is used by both academics and the broad design community of practitioners, and has been widely acclaimed in both fields. Launched publicly in April 2010, as of September 2013 the website has received 159,678 unique visitors from 180 countries, and between them they have made 361,794 visits and 1,695,968 page hits.

SIGNIFICANCE

The Archigram Archival Project was shortlisted for the 2010 RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University-Located Research.