NATØ: Narrative Architecture in Postmodern London

Chronicling the last radical architectural group of the twentieth century NATØ (Narrative Architecture Today) who emerged from the Architectural Association at the start of the 1980s, this book explores the groups work which echoed a wider artistic and literary culture that drew on the specific political, social and physical condition of 1980s London. It traces NATØs identification with a particular stream of post-punk, postmodern expression: a celebration of the abject, an aesthetic of entropy, and a do-it-yourself provisionality. NATØ has most often been documented in reference to Nigel Coates (the instigator of NATØ), which has led to a one-sided, one-dimensional record of NATØs place in architectural history. This book sets out a more detailed, contextual history of NATØ, told through photographs, drawings, and ephemera, restoring a truer polyvocal narrative of the groups ethos and development.