Peter Cook
Bubble Suburb
Register Interest
Please enter your email to be notified when the Peter Cook Edition Sale launches and to receive other HENI updates.
Bubble Suburb
HENI and Serpentine are delighted to release Bubble Suburb by Sir Peter Cook. The artworks will be available by application later this year.
On the occasion of his Play Pavilion commission with Serpentine, Sir Peter Cook has created a special limited edition print of a drawing he conceived whilst developing the public art project. Titled Bubble Suburb, the drawing was inspired by the domed structure of the Play Pavilion. Since the early 1960s, Cook has developed a distinctive body of visually rich and colourful drawings depicting radical conceptual possibilities within architecture.
Predominantly coloured in orange with detail parts in swathes of other bright colours, Bubble Suburb is a liberating enclosure, with walls that undulate and give cutely framed views of the world outside: a great place to live.
The suburb lets these walls join up in long runs that are interspersed with service runs and woodland runs. Occasionally, there are tall glass fingers that contain workshops and studios.
In the distance, a ‘normal city’ can be seen, whose inhabitants are looking across—enviously.
The Bubble Suburb editions are framed Giclée prints on Cotton Smooth Rag, each measuring 54.2 x 54.2 cm (framed). The edition size is limited to 100 (plus 10 APs). Each print is hand-signed on the front by the artist.
To be notified when the Edition Sale launches and to receive other HENI updates, please register interest at the top of this page.
"Wouldn’t it be great if a suburb could literally bubble out of the ground like a tasty orange broth: with its inhabitants living in the bubbles?"
- Sir Peter Cook
About Sir Peter Cook
Sir Peter Cook first gained international recognition through the visionary group Archigram, whose conceptual projects — including Plug-In City (1963–66) — continue to challenge ideas at the intersection of architecture, technology, and society. Alongside these influential unrealised works, Cook’s built projects include Kunsthaus Graz in Austria (completed in 2003 with Colin Fournier) and the Drawing Studio (2016) and the Innovation Studio (2021) for Arts University Bournemouth. His work has been the subject of numerous publications and exhibitions, and in 2002 he was awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Royal Gold Medal, the institution’s highest honour.
A celebrated teacher and writer, Cook served as Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, and as Chair of the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. In recognition of his contributions to the field, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 and awarded an honorary doctorate by Lund University, Sweden, in 2010. He is a Royal Academician, a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the French Republic, and currently a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London. Over the course of his career, he has taught at institutions including University College London, the Architectural Association, the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Harvard University, Columbia University, SCI-Arc, USC Architecture, and Rice University.
Cook’s drawings are held in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt; FRAC Centre, Orléans; M+ Museum of Art, Hong Kong; Japan Architect Collection, Tokyo; the National Museum of Art, Oslo; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Peter Cook is the director of Peter Cook Studio Crablab.