Peter Cook exhibition explores colourful urban visions at Richard Saltoun Gallery
Peter Cook exhibition ‘Cities’ launches at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London

A new Peter Cook exhibition delves into some of the architect, educator and writer's best-known creative products, his artworks – a series of colourful, imaginative and visionary drawings that explore buildings and cities. It is some of these captivating pieces that the British architect and member of Archigram explores in a new London architecture exhibition titled 'Peter Cook: Cities' that has just opened at Richard Saltoun Gallery.
Arcadia A, 1977-78
Peter Cook exhibition in cities
The show, designed by Cook Haffner Architecture Platform (CHAP) and including a media and VR element by Louis Peralta, coincides with the 60-year anniversary of the exhibition 'Living City' at London’s ICA. In it, famously, Cook, together with Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb – who would all soon form the architectural group Archigram – examined ideas around our urban environment.
As the ICA was at that time on the same street as Richard Saltoun Gallery, it felt a fitting opportunity to celebrate the 1963 exhibition that started it all, with a new display that looks both towards the past and the present, through old, new and site-specific works.
Arcadia B, 1976
Immersed in Cook's creative vision, visitors to the show are greeted by a site-specific installation by the architect and CHAP's Cong Ding who also oversaw the curation, an 'architectural environment produced especially for the gallery', before taking a deep dive into a selection of paintings, drawings and sculpture by the architect. Guests are invited to have ‘visual discussion’ about cities, as Cook writes that he 'is not concerned with whole cities nor whole projects, but with accumulated fragments and scrambled bits of inspiration'.
The gallery adds: 'It is the essence of conglomeration, of confrontation of the unlike with the unlike, of the potential of unexpected mixtures'.
Arcadia 4, 1980s
'Peter Cook: Cities', Richard Saltoun Gallery London
18 July – 16 September 2023
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).
-
Wangechi Mutu's powerful sculptures take over the palatial interiors of Rome's Galleria Borghese
The Kenyan-born artist is the first living woman to have a solo exhibition at the villa
-
Il Sereno’s new Listening Suite is what phonophiles’ dreams are made of
Designed by Patricia Urquiola, the new Lake Como-facing suite unites Japanese listening culture with Italian design
-
Y.Z. Kami's meditative, architecturally-inspired Domes take over Gagosian Beverly Hills
A collection of Kami's Dome and Messenger paintings are currently united at Gagosian Beverly Hills
-
Shard Place offers residents the chance to live in the shadow of London’s tallest building
The 27-storey tower from Renzo Piano Building Workshop joins The Shard and The News Building to complete Shard Quarter, providing a sophisticated setting for renters
-
Kengo Kuma’s ‘Paper Clouds’ in London is a ‘poem’ celebrating washi paper in construction
‘Paper Clouds’, an installation by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is a poetic design that furthers research into the use of washi paper in construction
-
Foster + Partners to design the national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II
For the Queen Elizabeth II memorial, Foster + Partners designs proposal includes a new bridge, gates, gardens and figurative sculptures in St James’ Park
-
Wolves Lane Centre brings greenery, growing and grass roots together
Wolves Lane Centre, a new, green community hub in north London by Material Cultures and Studio Gil, brings to the fore natural materials and a spirit of togetherness
-
A new London exhibition explores the legacy of Centre Pompidou architect Richard Rogers
‘Richard Rogers: Talking Buildings’ – opening tomorrow at Sir John Soane’s Museum – examines Rogers’ high-tech icons, which proposed a democratic future for architecture
-
At the Royal Academy summer show, architecture and art combine as never before
The Royal Academy summer show is about to open in London; we toured the iconic annual exhibition and spoke to its curator for architecture, Farshid Moussavi
-
This ingenious London office expansion was built in an on-site workshop
New Wave London and Thomas-McBrien Architects make a splash with this glulam extension built in the very studio it sought to transform. Here's how they did it
-
Once vacant, London's grand department stores are getting a new lease on life
Thanks to imaginative redevelopment, these historic landmarks are being reborn as residences, offices, gyms and restaurants. Here's what's behind the trend