When lecturing on his travels, he is the recipient of ‘lots of boring, heavy books’ – most often ‘school annuals by institutions that are 10 years behind the Bartlett and AA’.
Having cut and pasted from Hans Hollein’s and Walter Pichler’s catalogue for Archigram 2, catalogues and books have kept on coming. The relentless flow of books in his direction started in the early 60s at the Architectural Association, when with Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb he produced the first Archigram pamphlets. This is an accumulation of a lifetime in architecture and academia, which exists despite his concerted efforts to fend off constant book giving. Rotring pen in hand, he is drawing ‘a spoof of an Italian hill town’ for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, enjoying the scurry of passers-by on a spring morning.Īll the rooms and the connecting corridor of his ground-floor flat are lined with books. From the street he is visible, seated at his drawing board in the bay window of a handsome, gabled brick Victorian house. Peter Cook is a native of jury panels and lecture platforms the world over, so it is a surprise to find him quite so at home in north London.
