The exhibition Archigram: Making a Facsimile runs from October 14 to November 6, 2025, at the Third Floor Hallway Gallery of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in New York City. This exhibition celebrates the launch of the first complete facsimile edition of the Archigram magazine, originally produced between 1961 and 1974 by the revolutionary British architectural collective. Known for its experimental and forward-thinking approach, Archigram challenged traditional ideas about architecture and urbanism through its imaginative use of graphics, color, and futuristic visions. The exhibition reintroduces this influential body of work to a contemporary audience, allowing visitors to experience the material, playful, and highly tactile nature of the original publications.

The show not only commemorates the historical impact of Archigram but also invites reflection on the continuing relevance of print as a medium for architectural experimentation. Visitors can explore how the original magazines were made, the tools and techniques used, and the process of creating an exact reproduction. This approach transforms the exhibition into both an archive and a laboratory, reconnecting design culture with the physical presence of paper, ink, and foldable structures in an era increasingly dominated by screens and digital graphics.

Event Overview

The exhibition takes place at The Cooper Union in New York, one of the most important centers for architectural education and experimentation. It presents the complete facsimile of all ten issues of the Archigram magazine, accompanied by documentation of the reproduction process. Each issue is displayed alongside its reconstructed counterpart, allowing visitors to see both the original design thinking and the precision of the modern replication. The display layout follows a chronological order, tracing the development of Archigram’s ideas from early radical sketches to complex spatial concepts that anticipated high-tech architecture and digital urbanism.

The gallery setting transforms the hallway into a continuous reading and viewing experience. Panels, folded sheets, and mounted prints are arranged to recreate the sense of discovery and surprise that defined the original magazines. Visitors are invited to touch, unfold, and explore, emphasizing the idea that architecture can be read, handled, and experienced beyond drawings or models. Supporting materials, including photographs, text excerpts, and working mockups, highlight how Archigram blurred the boundaries between publishing, design, and speculative architecture.

Architectural Analysis

The curatorial concept treats the Archigram magazine itself as a form of architecture. Instead of focusing on buildings, the exhibition focuses on the structures of thought and communication embedded in each issue. The design logic follows the magazine’s experimental spirit, using layers, overlapping visuals, and spatial sequencing to evoke the experience of entering a built environment.

Materiality is central to this approach. Paper becomes the primary medium, functioning as both surface and structure. Foldouts, cutouts, and popups evoke architectural elements such as walls, openings, and movement. The color palette of the exhibition borrows from Archigram’s own visual language, combining bright tones with bold typography. This reinforces the idea that architecture can exist in two dimensions as vividly as it does in three.

Contextually, the exhibition situates itself at the intersection of architecture, media, and history. It acknowledges Archigram’s deep influence on contemporary design practices, including modularity, adaptability, and the integration of technology into the built environment. Critically, one might ask whether the exhibition’s intense focus on printed media risks isolating the collective’s ideas from their architectural implications. The fascination with the magazine’s form can sometimes overshadow its visionary content about living, movement, and city making. Yet this limitation also becomes part of its charm, celebrating the beauty of architecture as communication and imagination.

Project Importance

This exhibition offers valuable lessons for architects, designers, and students. It demonstrates how design thinking can transcend buildings and take shape through media, communication, and experimentation. The facsimile project teaches the discipline of reconstruction, showing how to preserve creative integrity while adapting historical content for contemporary audiences. It emphasizes the importance of material engagement and reminds architects that innovation often begins with simple tools such as scissors, glue, and ink.

In architectural thinking, Archigram: Making a Facsimile contributes to understanding architecture as a broader cultural act. It reinforces the typology of architecture as media, where form and idea merge within the printed page. For today’s designers, this perspective is increasingly relevant, especially as digital tools threaten to detach architecture from its physical origins. The exhibition encourages reflection on how tactile processes and analog techniques can inform the digital present and inspire future experimentation. Its relevance lies in bridging generations, connecting the radical visions of the past with the evolving questions of the present about representation, accessibility, and imagination in architecture.

✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight

The exhibition captures the physical and conceptual complexity of Archigram’s work, highlighting how print can embody architectural thinking. It uses material, color, and sequence to simulate spatial experience while maintaining the magazine’s playful essence. Yet the narrow focus on paper mechanics could be seen as limiting, raising questions about how well such media-centered presentations convey the broader architectural and social dimensions of Archigram’s ideas. Still, it delivers a powerful reminder that architecture is not only built but also imagined and communicated through creative formats. The show’s celebration of tactile design and inventive reproduction reasserts the enduring value of material experimentation in an increasingly digital culture.

Conclusion

Archigram: Making a Facsimile is more than a retrospective. It is a rediscovery of architectural imagination through material reconstruction. It bridges past and present, transforming historical content into an active educational and sensory experience. Visitors leave with a deeper appreciation for the power of printed media as an architectural tool, capable of provoking thought, shaping discourse, and inspiring experimentation.

In the context of architectural culture today, the exhibition offers a timely reflection on how design ideas circulate and evolve. By showcasing both the original and reproduced forms of Archigram’s work, it demonstrates that architecture’s influence often extends beyond construction to occupy the realms of publishing, technology, and collective imagination. This exhibition reminds architects that creativity thrives where ideas meet materials and that the most transformative visions often begin not in buildings but on the page.

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