By Peter Cook

Peter Cook’s dis­tinc­tive draw­ings have cap­ti­vat­ed and inspired gen­er­a­tions of design­ers. Freed from styl­is­tic or func­tion­al con­ven­tions, his graph­ic spec­u­la­tions have rede­fined the lan­guage of archi­tec­tur­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Spec­u­la­tions spans Cook’s entire career, pre­sent­ing some 160 draw­ings that range from stu­dent projects in the 1950s, through Archi­gram, to new work com­plet­ed short­ly before going to press. Arranged chrono­log­i­cal­ly, these draw­ings chart the course of what can now be seen as an enthralling archi­tec­tur­al adven­ture. Cook’s own obser­va­tions about the nature of archi­tec­ture and urban­ism, and the con­cept of the build­able, are com­ple­ment­ed by pieces from archi­tects Frank Gehry, Toyo Ito, Thom Mayne and Peter Wilson.