Leave it to technology to burst my Suitaloon of memory. Old emails tell me that I met Dennis Crompton — architect, Archigram founder, and the group’s de facto archivist — on a spring day in late April. We sat for more an hour on a bench in Cooper Square while he graciously considered my adoring questions.
The six-member British group — Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, David Greene, Ron Herron, Michael Webb, and Crompton — produced some of the most revolutionary designs of the 1960s and early 1970s, thumbing their collective noses at the precepts of modernism and embracing the excesses of postwar pop culture. It befuddled Crompton that they were occasionally dubbed The Beatles of architecture. “We didn’t know the Beatles at all,” he said that day, nixing any hopes for intersquad comparison. Still, there I sat, fangirl posing as journalist. Read More …