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
-
New York's iconic Breuer Building is now Sotheby's global headquarters. Here's a first lookHerzog & de Meuron implemented a ‘light touch’ in bringing this Manhattan landmark back to life
-
Inside the process of creating the one-of-a-kind book edition gifted to the Booker Prize shortlisted authorsFor over 30 years each work on the Booker Prize shortlist are assigned an artisan bookbinder to produce a one-off edition for the author. We meet one of the artists behind this year’s creations
-
This Mumbai apartment feels pixelated, like walking into a retro video gameA MuseLAB-designed space embraces a repetitive grid pattern, yet manages to feel completely open and unrestrained
-
Richard Seifert's London: 'Urban, modern and bombastically brutalist'London is full of Richard Seifert buildings, sprinkled with the 20th-century architect's magic and uncompromising style; here, we explore his prolific and, at times, controversial career
-
Welcome to The Gingerbread City – a baked metropolis exploring the idea of urban ‘play’The Museum of Architecture’s annual exhibition challenges professionals to construct an imaginary, interactive city entirely out of gingerbread
-
The Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s houses of the monthFrom Malibu beach pads to cosy cabins blanketed in snow, Wallpaper* has featured some incredible homes this month. We profile our favourites below
-
Meet Forefront, a cultural platform redefining the relationship between art and architectureForefront co-founder Dicle Guntas, managing director of developer HGG, tells us about the exciting new initiative and its debut exhibition, a show of lumino-kinetic sculptures in London
-
Corten curves and contemporary flair transform this terraced house in LondonCagni Williams Associates’ sensitive refurbishment of a south London Edwardian house features a striking and sustainable Corten steel extension
-
You may know it as ‘Dirty House’ – now, The Rogue Room brings 21st-century wellness to ShoreditchThe Rogue Room – set in the building formerly known as Dirty House by Sir David Adjaye, now reinvented by Studioshaw – bridges wellness and culture in London's Shoreditch
-
The architectural innovation hidden in plain sight at Frieze London 2025The 2025 Frieze entrance pavilions launch this week alongside the art fair, showcasing a brand-new, modular building system set to shake up the architecture of large-scale events
-
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025 winner is ‘a radical reimagining of later living’Appleby Blue Almshouse wins the RIBA Stirling Prize 2025, crowning the social housing complex for over-65s by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, the best building of the year
