The City, Seen as a Garden of Ideas

'The City, Seen as a Garden of Ideas' is a survey of Peter Cook's career-long project to reinvigorate the city as we know it. A series of meditations on contemporary urban conditions in cities as diverse as Tokyo, Edinburgh, Houston, and Santa Monica, this volume also functions as an informal memoir in which Cook reveals the influences and motivations behind his seminal works for Archigram in the 1960s and early '70s, as well as more recent projects such as the biomorphic Kunsthaus, a contemporary-art exhibition space in Graz, Austria (with Colin Fournier). Among the other works featured in this volume are the housing block at Lutzowplatz, Berlin; the competition-winning design for the museum at Bad Deutsches Altenberg, Austria (both in collaboration with Christine Hawley); and Super-Houston, with its self-guided cars and trucks.