No. 3: THE ARCHITECTURAL COLLAGE

The architectural collage was once an extremely valuable tool... and it's making a resurgence.

The Archigram collective was a rad group of thinkers who took the collage to the next level during the 1960's. In a partial protest against the simplicity of modernism – at the height of modernism – the group took an extremist approach to urban proposals and publicized them via the collage.

Many of these "visions" seemed intentionally impossible – almost reminiscing aspects of a Studio Ghibli world with city's that could walk or a continuous monument stretching through the desert. Now, some of those proposals actually do exist – shoutout NEOM – and it was partially made possible through Archigram's futuristic imagery.

Nowadays, we're seeing that same outlandish aesthetic reintroduced into the design world. Often in school projects or sometimes in an OMA diagram, it feels somewhat familiar and its abstraction often speeds things up for us as designers. There's nothing like getting a point across by spending five-minutes in photoshop, cut n' pasting a few images and saying it’s a stylized render – thanks Archigram.

Anyway, they knew what they were doing and not just in their love for ambiguity. At heart, Archigram was a collective and they loved to collaborate. They didn't build much but they worked with many, published an enormous amount of thought, and influenced some of the best – including the likes of Super Studio, Mies, Zaha, Koolhaas, and the list goes on.