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The inimitable Dennis Crompton, cofounder of Archigram, died on January 20, 2025. He was 89. News of his passing was confirmed by his daughter, Catherine, and his longtime friend and collaborator Sir Peter Cook, who called Crompton the Archigram keeper of the Flame.Few architects influenced more late20th century imaginations than Archigram, an ethos Crompton helped sustain as the groups primary archivist. Crompton was also a friend of The Architects Newspaper, and AN cofounder Bill Menking. Crompton and Menking first met in London decades ago and became close. Menking later contributed to Concerning Archigram, a title that was edited by Crompton and published in 1999.More recently, Archigram contributed signed editions of its artworks as the awards forANs Best of Design Awards.Diana Darling, CEO/creative director of AN Media Group, shared, As I reflect on the the more then 30 years of knowing Dennis and the Archigram crew, families, and friends, the memories come flooding back. I remember the historical times spent with Dennis in London and in the U.S. It was fun to work with him each year on the Archigram Best of Design print that we distributed to our top design winners. He was a kind, patient man who held the group together and kept them organized all of these years. Rest in Peace.Finding the Archigram GuysCrompton was born on June 29, 1935, in the northern England city of Blackpool. He later told Hans Ulrich Obrist that as a fairly young child I decided I wanted to be an architect, about the age of twelve. He said it was around that time when he used to take apart his mothers washing machine because I liked to know how things worked, which was an important part of Archigram.As a teenager, Crompton studied mathematics, physics, and art at college in Blackpool. He was accepted into architecture programs at University of Liverpool and University of Manchester, but he chose Manchester because the department there was more technical. He said Steen Eiler Rasmussens book Town and Buildings was a major early influence. After leaving Manchester, he went to work for the planning wing of the London County Council (LCC) on the South Bank development, where he met Ron Herron, who eventually introduced him to Warren Chalk. It was at the LCC where Crompton said he started thinking about concepts like total planning and systems design.Then in his twenties, he cofounded a magazine called Archigram in 1961 with Cook, Herron, Chalk, Michael Webb, and David Greene. The first magazine edition was raw: It was 2-pages long and made with an electric typewriter.That magazine eventually snowballed into the architecture group, Archigram, we know today. We decided something had to be said about the terrible state of English architecture at that time, Crompton noted in describing why he cofounded the magazine. We eventually became known as the Archigram guys, so thats what we went with as a group, Crompton said. At the age of 30, he started teaching at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, where he worked closely with Alvin Boyarsky in the AAs communications department. Later, Crompton would teach at institutions like the Bartlett School of Architecture and lecture widely.Archigram won its first competition in 1969 for a project in Montecarlo, which required them to form an official office. The group set up shop at 53 Endell Street in London. Among the groups best known works were its Plug-In City and contraptions, dubbed things that go bang in the night.Archival FeverIn 1975, Crompton left Archigram because of a national economic meltdown, where offices could only work three days a week due to power shortages, Crompton said. That year, he established the Archigram Archives, which he maintained his entire life.Herron and Crompton curated an Archigram retrospective in Vienna, Austria, in 1994. Crompton kept teaching at the AA and Bartlett his entire career and lectured widely. Concerning Archigram was published in 1999. Later, Crompton digitized Archigrams archives. Menking remained a close friend, so when the group launched the online version of its archive in 2010, Webb and Crompton did so from Menkings Tribeca loft. The online version was hosted by the University of Westminster but is no longer accessible.Michael Webb (back) and Dennis Crompton (front) in the loft of Bill Menking and Diana Darling during the 2010 launch of the Archigram archive. (Courtesy AN)Though Archigram didnt build buildings, its techno-obsessed antics inspired generations of architects. Without the groups countercultural provocations, there would be no gizmo-fancying folks like Norman Foster, Rem Koolhaas, and Richard Rogers. Geoff Manaugh, writing in BLDG BLOGabout the online archive when it was announced, said that Archigrams ideas seem unbuilteven unbuildablebut those ideas actually lend themselves surprisingly well to the environment in which we now live, full of extreme suburbs, drive-in everything, KFC-supplied army bases in the middle of foreign deserts, robot bank tellers, and huge, HVAC-dependent wonderlands on the exurban fringe. He continued: The irony, for me, is that Archigrams ideas have, in many ways, actually been constructedbut in most cases it was for the wrong reasons, in the wrong ways, and by the wrong people.In 2011, Crompton joined Menking to honor Michael Webb at a benefit party for the Storefront for Art and Architecture.Menking (left) and Crompton (right) with Webb (center) on the mic during a 2011 event for Storefront. (Dillon DeWaters/Courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture)Later, Crompton designed a book in 2016 for artist Nancy Goldring and writer Peter Lamborn Wilson. It was published by Spuyten Duyvil. Crompton also editedArchigram: The Book, which was published in 2018. Todd Gannon reviewed the title forAN, with mention of the critique of the groups antics: Archigram unapologetically privileged pleasure over politics and rarely bothered to unpack theoretical propositions beyond pithy captions. Its reluctance to address head-on the thornier sociopolitical implications of its work left its members exposed to searing criticism, particularly in the early 1970s.Archigram TenArchigrams archive was ultimately sold in 2019 to M+ in Hong Kong. After pandemic delays, a portion of the collection was on view in the exhibitionArchigram Citiesin 2020, along with an accompanying series of hybrid events. Archigrams publications were numbered like comic books. After issue nine, published in 1970, there was a half-issue in 1974, and then silence. Until now: Archigram Ten was just released earlier this month. At its core, Archigram 10 aims to reaffirm the groups commitment to imagining architecture beyond the confines of tradition, looking to challenge practitioners to rethink the limits of their discipline, just as the group did over half a century ago, according to coverage in Architecture Today. Contributors include Hitoshi Abe, Odile Decq, Elizabeth Diller, Thom Mayne, and Eric Owen Moss. Additional engagement with the title is forthcoming in AN.
