At long last Peter Cook has managed to get an ‘Archigram’ building actually built. In the Austrian city of Graz, Europe’s City of Culture 2003. This spectacular new ‘art house’ stands on a river-side site in an urban district in need of revitalisation. Dubbed a ‘friendly alien’ by its architects, the futuristic, amorphous, shimmering ‘bubble’ was vehemently criticised by the media and the city’s inhabitants. But it nevertheless integrates well into its heterogeneous environment. According to Colin Fournier, the flowing contours derive from the idea of an imaginary two-metre wide demarcation line drawn around the neighbouring buildings. During construction, the Kunsthaus was quite a happening in its own right. First the steel-grid skeleton took shape, perched on concrete columns; this was then enveloped in a skin of grey insulation foil, which in turn was soon hidden behind a veil of shimmering blue. To say nothing of the light and media ‘talking’ facade, which literally communicates with the town, through messages and images projected via 925 fluorescent light tubes integrated within the facade. The project also involved integrating a part of architectural history – the Eisernes Haus, the first cast-iron framed building in Europe. Yet some scepticism remains as to whether a 35-year-old architectural idiom was successfully translated into the present day. The wall of the bubble is a conventional curtain wall of acrylic plastic, but what is innovative is the precision manufacture and lively effect of the 1500 3D plastic panels, each individually shaped.