From time to time, I discover an interview, an artist, a dreamer, or another non-conformist take on reality that I find worthwhile transcribing. 

I prefer to make such transcripts manually, by listening, pausing, and reflecting. Like drawing by hand. 

And also in the resulting text, it is possible to give some sense to that rhythm of reflection. 

In this post, a transcript of the conversation with artist/architect Peter Cook on the benefits of drawing by hand, on buildable or non-buildable ideas, on utopia or reality. I started transcribing around 11:15 in this video which also contains beautiful artwork. 

Somehow, I would like to grow old like Peter Cook…

In drawing

You can decide upon almost anything

How to make a building that can go from solid to transparent without a window?

From solid 

to slightly permeable 

and then translucent 

More translucent

Completely transparent

And then back again

I don’t think any of the work is utopian

The notion of utopia, the notion of the ideal perfect objective is not in my mind

I think that a lot of these drawings are buildable

they may not be a hundred percent buildable 

but they are more buildable

than they’re unbuildable

so what i’m saying is

to answer the question is it utopic 

No, it’s not utopian 

I even balk at the idea

if it’s huge you see

what happens is

the critical observer will say 

Ah! that stuff is utopian

what we do down the road is real

and it delights me to say that

we did build The Kunsthaus in Graz

which could have been one of these drawings

but it’s there 

you can go inside 

it is still working 20 years down the line

and agreeably 

The Kunsthaus in Graz, by Peter Cook

and so then I say 

hey hold it

if you say that this stuff is utopian

what about Graz  

it’s built

if you can

build Graz 

aha you guys

you can build 80% of this stuff 

it’s just that you obey by the critics and the

regular people saying it’s utopian 

You put it aside 

you put it into a kind of

you put it into a pigeon hole that says

oh those sort of architects are utopian

and we architects are normal

the delight I get out of doing some buildings 

it’s to say

screw you 

it can be built

so then i say

I do not want to be a utopian architect

i’m not interested in utopia 

I’m interested in architecture 

I’m interested in the drawings 

contributing towards 

the discussion and language 

of architecture 

and thank you very much 

I wouldn’t mind building some of it

Below are some images of the hand-drawn city landscapes by Peter Cook. From the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. 

Obviously all images are courtesy of the artist. 

A lot of Peter Cooke’s work and insights throw me back to my own architecture studies in the 70ies when we were allowed to design buildings that did not have to be buildable.

In the same way, his utopian/reality paradox is central to the ideas I developed as part of The Scaffold, a transdisciplinary learning studio for the Never Normal. The studio gives permission to play with ideas that are not necessarily buildable but that unlock some other kind of less cognitive insight.

Hope you stay on board

Warmest