British architect<\/a> does not perceive the imaginary visions of his drawings as something separate to what might be buildable. \u2018It is usual to say that there is the utopian world, and put a box around it, and then there\u2019s the real world,\u2019 he explains during our conversation. \u2018In a lot of architecture schools, the professor will say, don\u2019t look at that, it\u2019s just a utopian idea, it has nothing to do with what can be done. And I think professors are often the worst offenders, because the fact that it might be buildable makes them slightly nervous. What do we tell the kids then?\u2019<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any dividing line. One day, I was chatting in the street with Rem Koolhaas, who used to live near me, and we were going through all the people we remembered at the Architectural Association who had been dismissed, including ourselves, as drawers. Drawing people who made these pie-in-the-sky schemes. And we listed about 20 of them, including ourselves, who had built. But it was very comfortable to say there\u2019s utopia, and then there\u2019s proper building.\u2019 <\/p>\n
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Here, Cook returns to a recurring theme in his thinking, that the distance between speculation and construction is far thinner than most assume.\u2018Had something like the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz been shown as a drawing, people would say, ah, yes, but it\u2019s not a real building. And then it\u2019s there, you can walk inside it, have a pee inside it, and put an exhibition inside it. It\u2019s a building, like buildings are.<\/p>\n
You can say that there are certain parts of it that are very normal, but there is no dividing line. And I still feel that quite vehemently. Just as it amused me to do the drawing that showed the Play Pavilion in London as a piece of Instant City. Because you could have taken that pavilion, put it in the Instant City drawing and say, oh, yes, that\u2019s just a piece of it. I\u2018m not saying absolutely every drawing is 100% buildable, but it\u2019s a bloody sight more buildable than people like to give it room for. And I think the connection is important.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Kunsthaus Graz, bird\u2019s-eye view | image Zepp-Cam. 2004\/Graz, Austria<\/p>\n
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DRAWING AS CONTINUUM, NOT ESCAPE<\/p>\n
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Cook repeatedly returns to the danger of isolating speculative work from architectural practice. \u2018If you categorize it as utopian and then declare that this is one thing and that is another, it becomes very, very dangerous,\u2019 he warns. History, he observes, is full of ideas once dismissed as fantasy that eventually materialized. \u2018There\u2019s a whole history throughout civilization of things that were dreams that suddenly somebody was surprised by and said, oh, bloody hell, it\u2019s there,\u2019 he adds.<\/p>\n
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For Cook, the value of speculative work lies precisely in its proximity to reality. \u2018Most of the buildings, even the sort of weirder things or imaginative things, have an arrangement of parts,\u2019 he mentions. Whether inserting structures into a hillside or drawing something nearly abstract, he insists he always carries a clear sense of \u2018the size of it and how you would access it and what you would make it from.\u2019 His refusal to separate visionary thinking from architectural logic is consistent: \u2018There is no dividing line.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Plug-In City versus Kunsthaus Graz, drawing versus pavilion \u2013 for Cook, these are variations of the same continuum. Even projects that appear whimsical are rooted in architectural intent. This attitude extends to how he approaches teaching. He sees drawing as a space for testing architectural thinking. \u2018We\u2019re investigators,\u2019 he tells us. \u2018And you can investigate with a paintbrush or with a computer or with a measuring rod\u2026 we\u2019re still in the doing-it business.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Kunsthaus Graz, view from the Schlossberg | image Universalmuseum Joanneum\/N. Lackner<\/p>\n
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OPTIMISM, COMPUTATION, AND THE FUTURE<\/p>\n
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When the conversation shifts to the future and whether optimism is still relevant, Cook\u2019s response is immediate: \u2018Oh, absolutely.\u2019 But he is careful to distinguish optimism from naivety. He describes the pandemic as having become \u2018a great excuse for gloomers,\u2019 fuelling a culture of resignation he finds unhelpful. Instead, he places his hopes in the emerging generation of computational designers. \u2018The people who are doing wonderful things with computational architecture do have the fire in their eyes. They still have the fire in their eyes.\u2019 Geographically, he sees momentum shifting away from Europe. \u2018I think the new architecture is coming from the far East,\u2019 he suggests. \u2018Not because of cultural ideology, but because they seem not quite so nervous.\u2019<\/p>\n
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In response to the question about whether his works reflect escapism, Cook resists the idea. \u2018There might be, but I would see that as a weakness,\u2019 he replies. For him, these drawings are probes into alternative ways of living. His reflections drift toward the in-between spaces of the urban fabric, suburbs, valley towns, and industrial sheds threading through landscapes. \u2018There are many forms of utopia\u2026 many forms of the device directed towards a notion,\u2019 he notes.<\/p>\n
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What fascinates him is how environments stitch themselves together: \u2018The notion of how you knit a city interests me tremendously.\u2019 He describes flying over Spain, observing towns splintering into \u2018shed, shed, shed,\u2019 and becomes animated about the hidden intelligence within Chinese shophouses: \u2018Is it a shop? Is it an industry? Is it family? Is it extended?\u2019 These hybrid conditions, he argues, are not utopias at all but the material of architecture itself: \u2018We\u2019re in the let\u2019s-see-how-you-do-it business.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | \u00a9 Peter Cook<\/p>\n
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\u2018LOOK, LOOK, LOOK\u2019: advice for the next generation<\/p>\n
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Invited to share what guidance he would offer to a younger generation intent on imagining beyond the ordinary, Cook answers without hesitation: \u2018Look. I always say look.\u2019 He illustrates the point with an anecdote about a talented AA student designing a bus station from an American reference rather than her own daily commute. \u2018Do you remember getting off the bus?\u2019 he had asked her, a question that, for him, exposes how easily designers rely on \u2018packaged information\u2019 instead of lived experience.<\/p>\n
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True understanding, he insists, comes from attentive observation, noticing how \u2018the houses on the cliff\u2019 shift into \u2018a smart town,\u2019 where \u2018the tourists don\u2019t go,\u2019 and \u2018where the backyard industry\u2019 hides. \u2018It has to do with looking,\u2019 he emphasizes. \u2018The keyword is look. Look, look, look. Watch how you get out of the bus if you\u2019re going to design a bus station. Not what it tells you in a manual.\u2019<\/p>\n
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Listening to Cook, it becomes clear that utopia isn\u2019t elsewhere. It sits in the sketchbook, in the act of looking, in the split second when a drawing becomes a proposition. The future of architecture is all about staying curious enough to keep on drawing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"'I](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/idea-utopia-sir-peter-cook-optimism-power-drawing-interview-designboom-11.jpg\")
Sir Peter Cook revolutionized modern architecture with visionary projects<\/p>\n
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installation view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 \u00a9 the artist | image courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DESIGNBOOM IN CONVERSATION WITH SIR PETER COOK \u00a0 \u2018I don\u2019t really agree with the idea of utopianism,\u2019 Sir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[44939,29062,449,458,459,64,63,460,134,44937],"class_list":{"0":"post-367177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-archigram","9":"tag-architecture-interviews","10":"tag-arts","11":"tag-arts-and-design","12":"tag-artsanddesign","13":"tag-au","14":"tag-australia","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-peter-cook"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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