Michael Webb: Two Journeys

Amazing architectural reveries from the Archigram pioneer

The artist Michael Webb, trained as an architect, operates at the intersection of art and architecture and is widely known for creatively exploring the outer limits of drawing techniques, including orthographic and perspectival projection systems. He is a founding member of Archigram, which formed at the Architectural Association in London in the early 1960s. The legendary avant-garde group is known for their fantastical projects that were often interpreted as critiques of contemporary architectural theory and practice.

Two Journeys is the first comprehensive monograph on Webb’s oeuvre and assembles sixty years of the artist’s work into a continuously evolving narrative about the multifaceted relationships among the built environment, landscape, and moving vehicles. He investigates these relationships through the act of drawing using notions of time, space, and speed, which are artfully mediated by the precision of mathematics and tempered by abstraction.

Featuring nearly 200 drawings, this extensively visual monograph includes essays by Kenneth Frampton, Michael Sorkin, Mark Wigley, and Lebbeus Woods, whose critical perspectives alongside texts and commentaries by Webb shed light on an extraordinary body of work.

Michael Webb (born 1937) is an artist and a professor of architecture. Born in England, he immigrated to the US in 1965 and is now based in Wakefield, RI. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, Cooper Union, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Architectural League of New York. His work has been published extensively in books and journals including the Journal of Architectural Education and Architectural Design. Webb has been honored with a fellowship by the Canadian Center for Architecture (2010–11), and he is a recipient of a grant from the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts (2014). He has taught architecture and drawing for over 50 years at such institutions as the Architectural Association, Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design and Virginia Tech.