Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MA Architecture
Royal College of Art
9874 words
CONTENT
Illustrations
05
Chapter 01 - Introduction
07
Chapter 02 - Capital of Cool 15
Chapter 03 - The high summer of technological optimism
23
Chapter 04 - Technology is the answer but what was the question? 39
Chapter 05 - Every English schoolboy is in love with trains
51
Chapter 06 - Cherry soup, Wiener Schnitzel with egg on the top
and blueberry pudding
61
Chapter 07 - Pre-conclusion notes
68
Conclusion: What I have learnt from Cedric Price
73
Acknowledgements 85
Bibliography 86
ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover (L):
Authors Own Image (2014) , Image taken by Armor Gutierrez Rivas
Cover (R):
http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/PUBLIC/WHATSON/exhibitions.
php?item=206
Figure 01:
Authors Own Image (2001)
Figure 03:
Authors Own Image (2001)
Figure 04:
Authors Own Image (2001)
Figure 05:
http://angelasancartier.net/boutique
Figure 06:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/feb/04/fashionstatement-lady-gaga
Figure 07:
http://dom-ino.tumblr.com/
Figure 08:
http://architecturewithoutarchitecture.blogspot.co.uk/
Figure 09:
http://socks-studio.com/2011/10/31/francois-dallegret-and-reynerbanham-a-home-is-not-a-house-1965/
Figure 10:
http://citiesaregoodforyou.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/the-
problem-with-le-corbusier/
Figure 11:
http://032c.com/wp-content/uploads/2001/07/Cedric-Price-008.jpg
Figure 12:
Courtesy of the Cedric Price Estate, London
http://grahamfoundation.org/grantees/4832-cedric-price-works19582003-a-forward-minded-retrospective
Figure 13:
Authors Own Image, from: 14th International Architecture
Exhibition: Fundamentals, Venice (2014)
Figure 14:
Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/283-cedric-price-fun-palace
Figure 15:
http://8late.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/02-cedric-price.jpg
Figure 16:
Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/283-cedric-price-fun-palace
Figure 17:
Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/283-cedric-price-fun-palace
Figure 18:
Courtesy of Canadian Centre for Architecture
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/283-cedric-price-fun-palace
Figure 19:
Authors Own Image (2014) , Image taken by Andreas Lang
Figure 20:
Authors Own Image (2014) , Image taken by Andreas Lang
*Author edited sourced illustrations
4
Figure 21:
http://tectonicablog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/130606_
London-Zoo-Aviary_Newby-Price.jpg
Figure 22:
Authors Own Image (2014)
Figure 23:
http://georginabister.com/blog/?p=837
Figure 24:
http://arqueologiadelfuturo.blogspot.co.uk/2011_02_01_archive.
html
Figure 25:
http://hacedordetrampas.blogspot.ca/2010/10/potteries-thinkbeltde-cedric-price.html
Figure 26:
http://hacedordetrampas.blogspot.ca/2010/10/potteries-thinkbelt-
de-cedric-price.html
Figure 27:
Hardingham, Samantha + Rattenbury, Kester. Supercrit#1 Cedric
Price - Potteries Thinkbelt. (London, New York: Routledge, 2007),
p.23
Figure 28:
http://hacedordetrampas.blogspot.ca/2010/10/potteries-thinkbeltde-cedric-price.html
Figure 29:
http://www.tastingbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/
tasting-britain-gay-hussar-soho-001.jpg
Figure 30:
http://now-here-this.timeout.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/
elenas.jpg
Figure. 31:
Authors Own Image (2014)
Figure 32:
Figure 33:
Figure 34:
Figure 35:
Figure 36:
Figure 37:
Figure 38:
Figure 39:
01 INTRODUCTION
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Cedric Price, The Conversation Series (Kln: Walther Knig, 2009), p.72
01 Introduction
Fig. 01: Cedric Price, morning interview with Kresimir Rogina, 24th March 2001
8
Fig. 02: Cedric Price, morning interview with Kresimir Rogina, 24th March 2001
10
01 Introduction
01 Introduction
'Right but what was he really about?' I asked myself while finishing
Stanley Mathews From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric
Price, probably the most comprehensive book about Price currently in
print. Although many articles and books have been published, it seems that
slippery-enough Cedric Price continues to challenge authors and readers
to get a real grip on him. I used this dissertation to knit my path towards
understanding. To conjure an existing memory and evoke the presence of
one of the most radical and influential thinkers2 of the twentieth century,
I had to evolve my thesis research as a complex mixture of reading,
interviewing, retracing steps and personal imagination. As a result, I found
myself producing a fusion of analysis, evocation and an enthusiasm that
exceeds the limits of a conventional 'academic' approach. Even if Price never
fitted easily into the accepted category of the 'architect', I came across a
rich realm of affection, memory and respect of the same, which has led
me to another challenge. While the work of any other architect can, to a
great extent, be smoothly categorised through a style epoch timeline, Price
does not allow us to reconstruct a conventional direct narrative. Like an
unresolved mind map, he leaves us a set of clues that flash up without any
obvious correlation, priority or order. I equipped myself with oversized retro
sunglasses, adjustable high-tech binoculars and 'geek chic' thick-rimmed
wayfarers, which enabled me to utilise different observation angles and
scales in an attempt to discover the unusual and excessive qualities of his
time, work and life. It is important to understand that this dissertation is
neither a conventional biography, nor another attempt to put things in
order. Using transitory methods of cross-cutting, reframing, edits, long shots
and zooms, it more closely resembles a cinematic project that reveals my
pilgrimage towards comprehension. The story begins 14 years ago as an
accidental encounter and re-starts eight-month ago as a research journey
that unfurls a little glimpse of what I have learnt from and about Cedric Price.
Fig. 04: Kresimir Rogina and Rosa Rogina visiting Cedric Price Architects
Polaroids taken by Cedric Price, 24th March 2001
12
Author intentionally does not use term architect because of its possible limitations in understanding.
13
02 CAPITAL OF COOL3
'Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I dont need no friends
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise'4
'Swinging sixties' they say, a time when London was a Mecca for the
avant-garde of any kind. It was an Era of a youth-led Cultural Revolution,
transforming Londons austere, grimy post-war streets into a flourishing,
shiny nucleus of culture. 'What say, you, we go out on the town and swing,
baby? Yeah!'5 whooped the citys kitschy caricature Austin Powers 40 years
later. Yet, newly established bohemian movements were not another
variable of collective escapism. On the contrary, they were a continuous
search for change a search for a new and better reality. It was a moment
in time where young and new intriguingly fused with, and slowly took
over archaic and traditional, where working-class talent slightly abrasively
blended with upper-class attitude. 'This spring, as never before in modern
times, London is switched on. Ancient elegance and new opulence are all
tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. The city is alive with birds and
the Beatles, buzzing with mini cars and telly stars. The guards now change at
Buckingham Palace to a Lennon and McCartney tune, and Prince Charles in
firmly in the longhair set. In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst
into bloom. It swings; it is the scene'6 wrote Piri Halasz for Time Magazine in
April 1966.
Swinging 60s - Capital of Cool, http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-london/swinging-60s-capitalof-cool (Accessed July 2014)
4
Lyrics extract from The Kinks song Waterloo Sunset (1967)
5
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, dir: Jay Roach, 1997
6
Piri Halasz for Time magazine, 1966 quoted in Jerry White, Social and Cultural Change in 1960s London (2007),
http://www.british60scinema.net/swinging-london/ (Accessed July 2014)
3
14
15
02 Capital of Cool
Not far away from the glossy lights of Carnaby Street live showcase of
its time brilliant young renegades were already banishing what was then
considered to be 'old and secure', causing a universal cultural stir. From
architects to the next generation of politicians, informal salons of bohemian
cafs in Soho became the places to be. As I could almost feel the smoke
of cigars diffusing over 49 Dean Street parlours, colloquially known as The
French House,7 while regular discussion among the young cultural spectra
was taking part. Exactly at this point, one specific restless architectural voice
was being heard. Regardless of whether the discussion took place within
the radical left, the counter-cultural avant-garde or by any chance the Royal
family, it didnt matter.8 He was equally admired and will be remembered
until nowadays. Intelligence and wit wrapped up in a package adorned with
a simple striped shirt with a detachable collar, hush puppies on his feet,
holding a cigar in one hand and glass of cognac in the other hand,9 it was
definitely young Cedric provoking and acquiring admiration, not only from
his like-minded architecture fellows.
'Each morning, for many years, Cedric Price and I would take breakfast
together. Starting at seven or seven-thirty we would argue, he was a leftwing Socialist, I a right-wing Conservative. Some people go each morning to
a gymnasium in order to limber up. I used to argue with Cedric Price to get
my mind in shape.'10
ALLISTAR MCALPINE
Around the same time, under the roof of the Institute of Contemporary Art,
a group of young and ambitious architectural rebels began to gather within
a wider cultural circle of painters, sculptors, writers and critics. Nearly like
Herman Goering while uttering 'When I hear the word culture, I reach for my
It is said that the French House, officially known as The York Minster Pub, opened in 1910, was the place
where artists like Eduardo Paolozzi, Toni del Renzio and Francis Bacon used to share one table while architure
figures like James Stirling and the Smithsons shared another..
8
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.19
9
Ibid. p.42
10
Allistar McAlpine, Once a Jolly Bagman, 1998 quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The
Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.43
7
Fig. 05, 06: Lady Jane boutique at its peak, Carnaby Street 1966
16
17
19
Archigram was undoubtedly following the steps of Eduardo Paolozzi and its
other 'uncles' from the Independent Group.16 Inspired by Apollo missions,
constructivism, biology, Italian futurism, manufacturing, electronics and
pop culture, they used the media of psychedelic, science fiction images to
express their playful, pop-inspired, pro-consumerist visions of a technocratic
future,17 one that through its fetishisation of technology rejects any
continuity of current conventions and predominant trends.
20
Author interview with Dennis Crompton, architect and part of Archigram group, 11.08.2014
Simon Sadler, Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2005), p.44
25
Author interview with Dennis Crompton, architect and part of Archigram group, 11.08.2014
26
Author interview with Samantha Hardingham, architectural writer and editor; worked on several books and
publications on Cedric Price, 13.07.2014
27
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
23
24
21
'In the fifties, children were playing with wooden toys, which I found strange.
I had a Meccano set; I had technology toys.'29
DENNIS CROMPTON
While drawing the curtains over the drab and dmod 1950s, post-war
Britain did not only wholeheartedly greet a revolutionary period of deindustrialisation, new education policies and an age of the common man
and woman, it also faced the sudden blossoming of a yet undiscovered
technological promised land one that was empowering the ordinary
individual to participate in the romantic fascination with science and
technology. Ideally, this was done while reading still-warm copy of Hefners
Playboy magazine, with several characteristic glossy spreads dedicated to
the latest dream machine held by the worlds most famous secret agent; yet,
it did not take long for the term 'technology' to transcribe from 'Bondmania'
like fantasies to everyday living. Freshly produced gadgets and gizmos
soon became a real embodiment of the hard-hitting mass consumerism
phenomena that rocked the boat of the decade. Socially, politically and
culturally liberating effects of the latter fostered a new type of relationship
between human being and machine,30 turning the focus of the production
industry towards the pleasure of the non-exclusive technological youth.
'Looking back it was a very fresh period there was a ground of
opportunities an introduction to the world where everything seemed
possible. You could go to the moon, you could build a Concorde, you could
do all this things just you had to push technology and eventually make it
happen.'31
S TEVEN MULLIN
Reyner Banham, Rank Values, 1972 quoted in Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate
Future (London: The MIT Press, 2003), p.382
29
Author interview with Dennis Crompton, architect and part of Archigram group, 11.08.2014
30
Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (London: The MIT Press, 2003), p.25
31
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
28
22
23
'The architect who proposes to run with technology knows that he will be in
fast company if, on the other hand, he decides not to do this, he may find
that a technological culture has decided to go on without him.'33
REYNER BANHAM
That is not to say that it was the first attempt for terms such as 'machine' and
'technology' to infiltrate into the architectural sphere, nor that it was entirely
the consequence of the post-war progressive belief. In the early 1920s, a
heroic age of modern architecture gave birth to what was to be defined
as the Machine Aesthetic movement, placing a cornerstone of qualitative
change in the relationship between society and technology.34 It was a decade
underlined by the proliferation of automobiles, telephones, radios and
moving pictures in everyday lives, although still exclusively for the elite.
Testifying the revolutionary reduction of the machinery to the human scale,
the machine-driven Modern Movement was soon glorifying 'the promise of
a machine-made future'. Yet, their (only apparently) radical slogans, such
as 'a house is a machine for living', did not seem to pursue anything similar
to F.T.Marinettis futurist pronouncements of the machines as a source of
personal fulfilment and gratification.35 Rather than multiplying the man by
the motor,36 their relationship with the 'machine' was retained purely on
The Labour Party, Leisure for Living, 1959 quoted in Stanley Mathews, The Fun Palace: Cedric Prices
experiment in architecture and technology, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 3 (2) (2005), http://
www.bcchang.com/transfer/articles/2/18346584.pdf (Accessed August 2014)
33
Reyner Banham Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, 1960), p.329-330
34
Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (London: The MIT Press, 2003), p.53
35
Reyner Banham Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, 1960), p.132
36
F.T. Marinetti, Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine, 1911 in Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and
Laura Wittman, Futurism: An Anthology (Yale University Press, 2009), p.89-92
32
24
If one considers the 1920s to have encapsulated the First Machine Age,
then it is indubitable that the young technological 'architecture autre'40 of
the 1960s was already fearlessly marching towards the Second. Abolishing
existing collectivism, universality and notions of common good, the Second
Machine Age was celebrating rising individualism and freedom of choice. As
recent and old-enough witnesses of the War and Britains later elevation to a
world leader in aircraft technology, these architectural youngsters evidently
drew their early inspiration from engineering projects of wartime.41
'It was about how do you design components so they reassemble in a
different way like my Meccano set.'42
DENNIS CROMPTON
38
25
Second Machine Age youth took the first steps over Buckminster Fullers
15-years-old intact 'trail of barely exploited possibilities [waiting] for other
people to develop'.43 One that contained a real 'technological essence'
Banham was still searching for.44
A housewife alone often disposes of more horsepower today than an
industrial worker did at the beginning of the century'45 explained Reyner
Banham, who previously trained as an aeronautical engineer, in his
theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. And yes, the
glorification of heavy, noisy and lethal machinery that marked the period of
Victorian industry was suddenly swept aside by an absolute boost of clean,
quiet, fun and extensively available gadgets.46 Assets like mixers, grinders,
automatic cookers, washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners,
shavers and hair-dryers designated a real domestic revolution.47
For the exhibition This is Tomorrow in 1956, Richard Hamilton used the
same domestic goodies or up-tothe-minute objects of desire, to produce
his epoch-makingcollage manifesto challenging 'What is it that makes
todays homes so different, so appealing?' A decade later, Reyner Banham
gave his counter-response. While the three little pigs were still discussing
whether to build a house from straws, sticks or bricks, Banham had different
concerns. By declaring 'A Home is Not a House',48 he did not answer what a
contemporary home is; rather, he proclaimed what it should be.
'When your house contains such a complex of piping, flues, ducts, wires,
lights, inlets, outlets, ovens, sinks, refuse disposers, hi-fi reverberators,
antennae, conduits, freezers, heaters when it contains so many services
Reyner Banham, 'On Trial 6. Mies van der Rohe: Almost Nothing Is Too Much', 1969 quoted in Nigel Whiteley,
Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (London: The MIT Press, 2003), p.154
44
In the conclusion of Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, in 1960, Banham characterized Buckminster
Fuller as a messiah who will finally take British architects into a technological promised land.
45
Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, 1960), p.12
46
Previewing Cedric Price, Strange Harvest http://strangeharvest.com/previewing-cedric-price (Accessed
August 2014)
47
Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Architectural Press, 1960), p.12
48
Reyner Banham, A Home is Not a House, Art in America, 53 (2) (April 1965), p.70
43
26
Fig. 09: Anatomy of a dwelling, 'A Home is Not a House' by Reyner Banham, 1965
27
that the hardware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the
house, why have a house to hold it up?'49
REYNER BANHAM
Finally, by juxtaposing Barbarellas 'ambience of curved, pliable, continuous,
breathing, adaptable surfaces' with 'all that grey plastic and crackle-finish
metal, and knobs and switches, all that yech hardware!' in Stanley
Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey, Banham hailed the final 'triumph of
the software'.50 In relation to Heideggers concept of architecture as the
space of human activity rather than as a structure of enclosure, he made
a call for architecture of 'fit environments for human activities' in which
the aforementioned 'hardware' of form is nothing more than a mere
subservience to the 'software' of activities.51
At this point, one might ask: where is Cedric here? Undeniably, he is present.
If Banham was writing and polemicising about technology that could
determine a 'home' without any allusions to a roof or a fireplace, by simply
defining it as a complex of interpersonal relationships and mechanical
services,52 then Price was certainly doing it!
28
It was not a conventional theatre, nor a school, or a fun fair, and yet it could
be all of these things simultaneously or at different times.58 'Sufficiently
incomplete'59 Price teamed up with a lengthy list of various collaborators and
consultants, and conceived an unenclosed steel frame structure in which two
overhead travelling gantry cranes would fully service prefabricated modular
elements such as hanging screens, auditoriums, mobile walls, ceilings,
decks, walkways or even floors,60 directly in a response to a range of yet
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.63
55
Joan Littlewood, Joans Book, 1994 quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The
Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.46
56
Reyner Banham, Peoples Palaces, 1964 in Reyner Banham, A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham
(University of California Press, 1999), p.108
57
Fun palace brochure draft quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of
Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.135
58
Mathews, Stanley, The Fun Palace: Cedric Prices experiment in architecture and technology, Technoetic
Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 3 (2) (2005), http://www.bcchang.com/transfer/articles/2/18346584.pdf
(Accessed August 2014)
59
Price often said it was important to know when one was sufficiently incomplete. Modestly aware of his
knowledge boundaries, he would regurarly invite various experts to work on his projects, which would later
often result in a great personal relationship.
Term taken from the transcript of Samanta Hardinghams talk at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition:
Fundamentals, Venice (June 2014)
60
Cedric Price, Works II, Architectural Association (London: Architectural Association, 1984), p.11
54
30
Fun palace brochure draft quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of
Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.136-137
62
Price always refered to Buckminster Fuller as Bucky
63
James Meller, Interview with the author, 1999 quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The
Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.34
64
Nicola Mongelli, The Fun Palace, A Curtain That Never Rose, http://www.n-plus.us/html2/fun1.html (Accessed
September 2014)
65
Text extract from original blueprints of the Fun Palace quoted in Cedric Price, Re:CP (Basel, Boston, Berlin:
Birkhuser 2003), p.30
Fig. 15, 16: Plan of structural system & cross-section through the Fun Palace, 1963-1964
61
32
Fig. 17: the Fun Palace on Lea River site, Mill Meads, c. 1964
33
35
It didnt take long for Price to realize that in order to predict and facilitate
possible future events in the so-called 'laboratory of fun', the Fun Palace
would not only require the ability to memorise to behavioural patterns of
the users, but would also need to be built upon a self-regulated and selfcorrecting system without yet a defined end-state.66
Alice: 'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
Cheshire Cat: 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.'67
ALICES ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND BY LEWIS CARROLL
36
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.176
73
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
74
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.242
72
37
'Philosopher, sir?'
'An observer of human nature, sir', said Mr. Pickwick76
THE PICKWICK PAPERS BY CHARLES DICKENS
77
Believing in architecture that does not solely increase the amenity value
of existing situations, but most importantly enables greater variety of
choice and adjustment,81 relationship between entities of 'the built' and
of 'the housed' was of a great importance to Price. One could not change
without altering another. Therefore, to maintain a valid role in a constantly
Title from Cedric Price Technology Is The Answer But What Was The Question? lecture, 1979
Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as The Pickwick Papers), 1836
quoted in Wish We Were Here - Cedric Price: mental notes, Architecture Association, London, 05.03.200126.3.2001
77
Price held 16 copies of The Pickwick Papers at home, with one copy especially reserved for traveling
Cedric Price endlessly made his life partner Eleanor Bron read the Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. He liked
the way in which it expressed the idea of place, idea of traveling.
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
78
Oxford dictionaries online, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/architecture (Accessed
March 2014)
79
Cedric Price, Works II, Architectural Association (London: Architectural Association, 1984), p.92
80
Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, http://www.alice-inwonderland.net/books/alice-in-wonderland-quotes.html (Accessed August 2014)
81
Cedric Price, Planning for pleasure in Cedric Price, Works II, Architectural Association (London: Architectural
Association, 1984), p.61
75
76
38
39
Fig. 18
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Cedric Price, The Conversation Series (Kln: Walther Knig, 2009), p.136
Stanley Mathews, The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education 59 (3) (2006),
http://cast.b-ap.net/arc619f11/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2011/09/mathews-FunPalace.pdf (Acessed August
2014)
84
Ian Mikardo in Joan Littlewood, Joans Book, 1994 quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space:
The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.84
85
Stanley Mathews, The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education 59 (3) (2006),
http://cast.b-ap.net/arc619f11/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2011/09/mathews-FunPalace.pdf (Acessed August
2014)
86
I dont think there is any refusal of aesthetics of Price, there is a very strong aesthetic. If you look at his archive
all he did are publications. The aesthetic is kind of anti-aesthetic but it is completely consistent.
Author interview with Dr. Barnabas Calder, historian of architecture specializing in British architecture since
1945; curator of the Cedric Price: Think the Unthinkable exhibition, 13.08.2014
87
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
88
Homo Ludens (Man the Player) is a book written by Dutch historian and cultural theoristJohan Huizinga in
1938. It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society, suggesting that playing is primary
and necessary condition.
89
Joan Littlewood, Joans Book, 1994 quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The
Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.75
Lavinia Scaletti and Rosa Rogina with assistance of Zarya Vrabcheva, Rodrigo Garca Gonzlez and Paul Boldeanu
The performance - scripted from existing quotations - imagined Cedric Price, Chantal Mouffe, Markus Miessen,
Doina Petrescu and Jeanne van Heeswijk discussing alternative ways of participation.
40
41
82
83
Fig. 19, 20: Participation say what ? performance, Royal College of Art WIP Show, 13.02.2014
90
91
42
Fig. 22: Author visiting the Snowdon Aviary, London Zoo, 2014
43
can no longer be filled with the birds for which it was designed'. 'Correction!'
he gleefully added. 'The real users for whom it was designed have changed
their viewing appetites'.96
'The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the
momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.'97
WERNER HEISENBERG
Prices work was a continuous stand against over-determined normative
architectural practice which, he argued, had resulted in 'the safe solution
and the dull practitioner', by trying to 'get it right the first time.'98 To a great
extent, he accepts chance as an essential element of human existence and
believed in an architecture that gains from its failures and imperfections
throughout the time.99 Through his Heraclitean view of post-industrial
society, Price advocated the principle of 'calculated uncertainty', endorsing
the creation of indeterminate structures that can be altered, transformed or
demolished when socially irrelevant.100
'Calculated uncertainty didnt mean you wouldnt have to make up your
mind, it meant you were about to take sensible risks.'101
STEVEN MULLIN
For that reason, the most enjoyable thing for Price about a caf he designed
for Blackpool Zoo, in 1970s, was not an idea of somebody having a coffee
there, but the fact of its eventual transformation to a giraffe house after the
caf would be proven as irrelevant.102 Evidently time played an essential role
Cedric Price, Snacks by Cedric Price in Cedric Price, Re:CP (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhuser 2003), Snack n.09
Werner Heisenberg, On the Perceptual Content of Quantum Theoretical Kinematics and Mechanics, 1927
in Manolopoulou, Yeoryia. The Active Voice of Architecture: An Introduction to the Idea of Chance, Field: 1 (1)
(2007), http://www.field-journal.org/uploads/file/2007_Volume_1/y%20manolopoulou.pdf (Accessed July 2014)
98
Cedric Price, Works II, 1984 quoted in Stanley Mathews, The Fun Palace as Virtual
Architecture, Journal of Architectural Education (2006), http://cast.b-ap.net/arc619f11/wp-content/uploads/
sites/8/2011/09/mathews-FunPalace.pdf (Acessed August 2014)
99
Manolopoulou, Yeoryia. The Active Voice of Architecture: An Introduction to the Idea of Chance, Field: 1 (1)
(2007), http://www.field-journal.org/uploads/file/2007_Volume_1/y%20manolopoulou.pdf (Accessed July 2014)
100
Cedric Price in Rowan Wilken, Calculated Uncertainty: Computers, Chance Encounters, and Community in
the Work of Cedric Price, Transformations journal 14 (2007)
101
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
102
Will Alsop, Flight of fancy, The Guardian online (2005), http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/
jun/18/architecture (Accessed May 2014)
96
97
44
45
Fig. 23: Aerial view of the Inter-Action Centre, Kentish Town, 1977
scaled-down and simplified version of the Fun Palace project, Price produced
a clients manual explaining how the building should be dismantled and
its components recycled,111 what one critic later described as 'something
like a euthanasia guide and donor card rolled into one'.112 To Price, it was
indubitable that the process of demolition is of the same importance as the
process of construction, and he was the only architect to be a fully qualified
member of the National Institute of Demolition Contractors.113 Toward the
very end of his career, when the Inter-Action Centre was in the process of
being listed, Price did not only prevent English Heritage from preserving the
building, he also steadfastly claimed that the centre was designed as a shortterm facility, which had already outlived its planned life span, and should
therefore be demolished and replaced with something of greater immediate
relevance.114 The demolition was carried out in 2003, shortly after Prices
death.
With further reference to the aforementioned aviary project, one could
argue that the sensitive treatment of the structure and its unique layout
that envelops both the observers and the observed, grants Price status
as a formative genius. However, Price was already for a long time driving
along a different road, diverging in all directions away from what was then
considered architectural terrain.115 It seems he always marched towards
what could be interpreted as non-design.116 One that, in the words of
Rem Koolhaas, 'dismantle[s] one by one the most holy ambitions of an
unquestioned profession',117 making it disappear into an unconventional
system more pertinent to up-to-date social demands. As a firm believer
that building was not always the most appropriate antidote, Price virtuously
Rowan Wilken, Teletechnologies, Place, and Community (New York, Oxon: Routledge 2011), p.103
Rowan Wilken, Calculated Uncertainty: Computers, Chance Encounters, and Community in the Work of
Cedric Price, Transformations Journal (14), 2007. http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_14/
article_04.shtml (Accessed August 2014)
113
Author interview with Dennis Crompton, architect and part of Archigram group, 11.08.2014
114
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.191
115
Arata Isozaki, Erasing Architecture into the System, 1975 in Cedric Price, Re:CP (Basel, Boston, Berlin:
Birkhuser 2003), p.25
116
Ibid. p.45
117
Rem Koolhaas in Cedric Price, Re:CP (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhuser 2003), p.45
111
112
Fig. 24: Main hall with electric doorway half opened, Inter-Action Centre, 1977
46
47
present, man of the 1960s, here and now. As a lifelong Socialist, Price was
a firm believer in architecture as an instrument of social improvement and
of an architect as an ethical mediator or a social engineer. Hence, both
variables of a question and of a response were never about the building itself.
Similarly to Moholy-Nagys ideology of 'Not the product, but man, is the end
in view', it was about the potential of human well-being and the quality of
life.123 Shortly before his death Price confessed to Stanley Mathews: 'It wasnt
about technology. It was about people'124 In the same manner in which
Price opened one of his lectures at the Architectural Association, I would
like to conclude this chapter by adding that: it was about an architects duty
to society through 'Designing for Doubt, Delight and Demolition',125 with
emphasis on delight!
48
Katarine Heron talking at Supercrit#1 event, 2003 in Samantha Hardingham and Kester Rattenbury,
Supercrit#1 Cedric Price - Potteries Thinkbelt (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), p.57
124
Cedric Price, Interview with the author, 2000 quoted in Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The
Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.257
125
Term taken from Cedric Price, Designing for Doubt, Delight and Demolition - the architects duty to the
society lecture, Architectural Association (3 June 1994)
123
49
'What is the value of it now what is useful about it now what is useful
about it now, for you?'127
'English architects are in love with universities' stated in the Introduction
of the Architecture Review in January 1965. Sussex, Warwick, Essex, York,
Keele; it was the decade of a real 'university boom'. If one says that English
architects in the mid-1960s were in love with universities, we could easily
argue that Cedric Price was simultaneously making a critique of what
had become an imprisoned way of thinking about what a university is.128
Although dominantly described as groundbreaking, Price considered
newly risen institutions solely as 'dressed up medieval colleges with power
points',129 not taking in account social change that had occurred all over
Britain. In his opinion, instead of following present trends and obsessions
with physical monumentality and the symbolism of academia, architects
should be more interested in challenging present premises of convention
and tradition in education: 'When the next round of university building
starts, perhaps we should treat education less as a polite cathedral-town
amenity'.130 Consequentially, in the spirit of his long-lasting manifesto for
education, 1966 brought one of Prices most remarkable projects.
The Potteries Thinkbelt was a call for the conversion of a deprived wasteland
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
127
Cedric Price answering the question if he would consider presenting Potteries Thinkbelt, around year 2002.
Samantha Hardingham, Preview in Samantha Hardingham and Kester Rattenbury, Supercrit#1 Cedric Price Potteries Thinkbelt (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), p.11
128
Paul Balker talking at Supercrit#1 event, 2003 in Samantha Hardingham and Kester Rattenbury, Supercrit#1
Cedric Price - Potteries Thinkbelt (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), p.71
129
Cedric Price, Life-Conditioning, Architectural Design No 36 (October 1966), p.483
130
Cedric Price and Paul Barker, The Potteries Thinkbelt, 1966 in Samantha Hardingham and Kester Rattenbury,
Supercrit#1 Cedric Price - Potteries Thinkbelt (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), p.17
126
50
51
Situated in North Staffordshire, not far away from Stone where he was
born in 1934, the Potteries were definitely Cedrics territory. Redundant rail
infrastructure, deteriorated vacant factories and rusty machinery: it was
hard to believe that this derelict industrial landscape was, for a long time,
the heart of the English ceramics industry. After being heavily hit by the
post-war economic crisis, North Staffordshires pottery suddenly diminished.
Knowing the area from his earliest age, Price didnt believe in the revival of
Potteries dilapidated industries. Yet he found an underused rail network and
a population of thousands of unemployed industrial workers to have great
potential for establishing an alternative education system.134
'Unquestionably his most intimate project and it is not what it seems like. It
is far more complex on a personal level. Once you realise Cedric Price came
from just about three miles away from there, you kind of start to appreciate
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.195
132
Cedric Price, Live-conditioning, Architectural Design 36 (October 1966), p.483
133
Author interview with Samantha Hardingham, architectural writer and editor; worked on several books and
publications on Cedric Price, 13.07.2014
134
Stanley Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.206
131
52
the personal relationships with the landscape, and the desire to see that
landscape breathe in a way that it wasnt doing. Although he would have
killed me for saying this.' 135
TIM ABRAHAMS
One might imagine that a person whose favourite book was Dickens
Pickwick Papers would envision that same landscape through a set of warm
and nostalgic scenes, but Price 'never used two lines when one would do'.136
Enriched only with self-critical afterthoughts,137 each of Prices drawings was
treated as a rhetoric device where joy and tangible beauty were exactly in
'their quite deliberate incompleteness'.138 'One thing about his projects is that
they teach you to draw damn well!' admitted Steven Mullin.139
At the same time, the name of the project was scrupulously chosen: on
the one hand to liberate the proposal from all generic preconceptions of
building type or programme and on the other to emphasise the peculiarities
of the design to be encountered.140 It was not intended to be a university
but a scheme for a new regional educational network where technical
education was to become a new prime industry, and technical knowledge a
key production good. It was not by chance that the word 'university' was left
out from the title as it was still mainly associated with elitism, prestige, and
outdated education topics. In the words of one of his sympathisers: 'There
still exists a kind of intellectual snobbery that pays greater respect to the
man who misquotes Horace than the man who can repair his own car'.141
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture 08.08.2014
136
His drawings always extend the prose even when it was his own rather than merely clarifying it. Never
using two lines when one would do, the mere addition of two dots eye pupils could introduce the whole
range of human reflexes into an otherwise natural pudding face. This was actually Cedric writing about
friend and cartoonist Nicholas Bentley but I think that Cedric might have been proud to have his own talents
recognized in this way.
Transcript of Samanta Hardinghams talk at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition: Fundamentals, Venice
(June 2014)
137
Ibid.
138
Ibid.
139
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
140
Samantha Hardingham, Preview in Samantha Hardingham and Kester Rattenbury, Supercrit#1 Cedric Price Potteries Thinkbelt (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), p.12
141
Passage from one of the Lord Aberdares essays highlighted by Cedric Price, quoted in Stanley Mathews,
From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), p.198
135
53
Fig. 26: Site Plan of the Potteries Thinkbelt, showing main routes and areas, 1965
Fig. 27: Overleaf photomontage of Madeley transfer area, Potteries Thinkbelt, 1966
54
55
56
57
they might be cut. To point where hes got a quite reasonable proposal, but
the stage between that and having something that you can actually start to
build is completely missing.'155
DR. BARNABAS CALDER
'It was an accident of not going through as much as anything else. At no time
did he ever think 'oh this is not going anywhere!' If he had thought that, he
would have dropped it like a stone'156 explains Steven Mullin, who at that
time worked for Price.
'Oh yesbut what you could do is this!' indubitably epitomizes Price. He
always went beyond his briefs, at all times taking it too far and ultimately
jeopardising his own projects.157 However, Price knew exactly where the wind
was blowing and there was always a deeper social significance embedded.
Something was about to happen.158
'This is when it becomes a strange parallel where you see him actually
working out how it will be built, which train lines were underused and when
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Cedric Price, The Conversation Series (Kln: Walther Knig, 2009), p.75
Cedric Price in conversation with Hans Urlich Obrist, 2000 in Cedric Price, Re:CP (Basel, Boston, Berlin:
Birkhuser 2003), p.75-76
152
Stanley Mathews, From Agit Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog
Publishing, 2007), p.225
153
The Open University was the worlds first successful distance teaching university. Born in the 1960s, the
White Heat of Technology era, the Open University was founded on the belief that communications technology
could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had the opportunity to attend campus
universities, http://www.mcs.open.ac.uk/ (Accessed March 2014)
154
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
150
151
58
Author interview with Dr. Barnabas Calder, historian of architecture specializing in British architecture since
1945; curator of the Cedric Price: Think the Unthinkable exhibition, 13.08.2014
156
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
157
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture 08.08.2014
158
Ibid.
155
59
'Most people came to work for Cedric by word of mouth, there was no official
hiring and firing procedure, people sort of drifted in and drifted out when
they had enough', remembers Steven Mullin. 'I was fairly hungry of smell of
fresh concrete in my nose; I wasnt getting bored, I was getting frustrated. It
could be frustrating working for Cedric because you approach something you
nearly got there and then whoop a second after, it is gone'. 159
'Excuse me, could I speak with Mr. Price?'
'Sorry, Mr. Price is in East Grinstead this morning.'160
Price was constantly meeting people everybody whom he found
interesting, from Princess Margaret down which resulted in a very wide
range of people constantly moving through his office.161 The White room,
which Price for unknown reason named 'East Grinstead', occupied the top
floor and was reserved for special guests or, even better, just himself.
'Incredible working style. He [Price] got up quite early and worked furiously
until 1pm and then went to The Gay Hussar for a very large lunch followed
by brandy and the rest of the day was gone but that was how Cedric
worked.'162
PETER HALL
'Table for one please.'
My sentence was followed by a moment of silence with an almost soundless
'pardon?' accompanying it in the very end. The waiter standing in front of
me slowly tilted his head. I had to repeat.
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
Ibid.
161
Ibid.
162
Peter Hall, Interview with the author, Kieran Mahon, Tracing the Quiet Anarchy, p.49 http://www.academia.
edu/1786887/Tracing_the_Quiet_Anarchy (Accessed May 2014)
159
160
60
61
06 Cherry soup, Wiener Schnitzel with egg on the top, and blueberry pudding
62
Fig. 29: The Gay Hussar restaurant - front entrance, 2 Greek Street, London
63
06 Cherry soup, Wiener Schnitzel with egg on the top, and blueberry pudding
'Of course I remember Mr. Price, he was our favourite customer. We loved
him and miss him. Each time he would order cherry soup, Wiener Schnitzel
with egg on the top and blueberry pudding.'167
SHELIM
I closed the menu.
'The same please.'
Cedric Price often used food metaphors when speaking about architecture,
analogising both processes in terms of consumption. But more importantly
and beyond everything, Cedric was a pure food enthusiast. In 2003, The
Independent characterized his lifestyle as 'modest, food and drink apart'.168
Saturday lunch with his life partner Eleanor Bron,169 early dinner with his likeminded architecture fellows or late drinks with various individuals that had
Tom Rowley, Can the conservatives save the Gay Hussar, Labours canteen?, The Telegraph online (2013)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/restaurants/10508426/Can-the-conservatives-save-the-Gay-HussarLabours-canteen.html?mobile=basic (Accessed May 2014)
166
Author interview with Shelim, waiter in The Gay Hussar restaurant, 30.05.2014
167
Ibid.
168
Cedric Price: Architect-thinker who built little but whose influence was talismanic, The Independent online
(2003), http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/cedric-price-36932.html (Accessed March 2014)
169
Eleanor Bron is an English stage, film and television actress and was Prices life partner.
Eleanor is still most loyal fan of him [Price] commented Tim Abrahams.
Cedric found in Eleanor somebody who was his bench in every sense of the word.
Author interview with Steven Mullin, architect; chief assistant in Cedric Prices office 1964-1969, 17.09.2014
165
64
65
gained his respect throughout the time, it didnt matter, as long as there was
a delectable meal followed by a substantial discussion and few brandies
preferably doubled.
In the 1970s, Price accompanied Archigram and James Stirling for a
workshop in Delft. As the university did not have great tutoring fees, in the
purely Dutch spirit, they all received bikes. At the airport, on his way back,
Price couldnt put his bike with the rest of the luggage and was told to carry
the bike himself. Trying to find his way out of the duty-free shop, with the
bike in one hand and a bottle of brandy in another, he accidentally spilled
the bottle. 'I would prefer if it had been the bike!' he shouted furiously.170 'I
was surprised Cedric accepted the bike in the first place' remembers Dennis
Crompton.
06 Cherry soup, Wiener Schnitzel with egg on the top, and blueberry pudding
66
Cedric Price, The importance of food to architecture lecture, 2001 in Cedric Price, Re:CP (Basel, Boston,
Berlin: Birkhuser 2003), Snack n.01
172
67
07 Pre-conclusion notes
'Architectural historians can and will argue for the coming centuries over the
quality and intent of Cedrics drawings,
about his desire to build, about his
unfathomably paradoxical nature, so
puzzling and improbable at times that are
we sure he is not just a marvelous figment
of our imaginations? Well, hell no! You
just have to smell the drawings and you
know he was the real deal.'173
SAMANTHA HARDINGHAM
Regardless what he was doing, Cedric Price always had a cigar in his hand leaving a recognizable smoky flavour
all around him. In her speech Samantha Hardingham recalled her visit to Canadian Centre for Architecture: []
some time later up came a crisp, clean beige folder. I opened it up (now wearing the obligatory white gloves) to
see what Id got. But before I saw anything, a wonderful, knock-out waft of cigar smoke came drifting out. All was
well. Transcript of Samanta Hardinghams talk at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition: Fundamentals,
Venice (June 2014)
173
Reyner Banham, BBC Radio 4, 1976 quoted in Cedric Price, Works II, Architectural Association (London:
Architectural Association, 1984), p.107
172
68
69
07 Pre-conclusion notes
Fig. 32: Sketch section of halo with indication od function and scale
Turtlan project for Groznjan, Croatia 1990
The 2nd International Symposium of Theory and Design in the Third Machine Age
Groznjan , Croatia, Summer 1990
71
In 1990, during his first visit to Croatia, Price produced a proposal for a cityscale electronic halo enveloping the medieval hilltop town of Groznjan.173
'Where and when the house needs me?' asked a mobile fragment while
travelling around Turtlans technological support circuit. Prior to the
development of pervasive Wi-Fi Internet access, ever-prophetical Price
introduced a new typology of communications network, a force-field
wireless system that would eliminate the necessity to build new physical
infrastructure or to dismantle any existing, yet keeping the inhabitants
tuned-up with the rest of the world.174
Such a progressive thinker, he saw what was going to happen to
architecture, to architects. Unfortunately all the things he foresaw that
architects would have to be challenged in, architects did not come up to that
and in many ways they are playing catch up.' 175
TIM ABRAHAMS
One could argue that despite the time gap of nearly six decades, Price and
a young architect of today do have something in common, as they are both
children of a technological revolution. Whereas the technological promised
land youthful Price had experienced was celebrating a freshly established
relationship between human and machine, the technological revolution that
we are confronted with seems to be slowly erasing boundaries between the
same.
173
In 1990 Price attended The 2nd International Symposium of Theory and Design in the Third Machine Age
in Groznjan, Croatia (authors country of birth), where he spent 10 days tutoring Work Games architectural
workshop. During his stay, Price designed Turtlan project for which he was later awarded on Shinkenchiku
Electronic House competition in Tokyo, Japan.
174
Cedric Price / edited by Samantha Hardingham, Cedric Price: Opera (Chichester, West Sussex, England: WileyAcademy, 2003), p.18
175
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
72
73
Fig. 37: 'Cedric Price & Kresimir Rogina doing their best for the improvement of architecture'
by Cedric Price, 24th March 2001
I was prompted to once again recall that rainy morning in the spring of
2001. I am slowly starting to revive a piece of paper that Price gave to
my father. Entitled 'Cedric Price & Kresimir Rogina doing their best for
the improvement of architecture', it was a drawing displaying two of
them manoeuvring an old-fashioned tank. Nearly in the same manner of
Antonionis Zabriskie Point slow-motion finale, which saluted the end of
consumer culture, Price and my father were hailing the last dance of run-outof-steam architecture. Although at that point it was unquestionable that the
cracked pieces penetrating through a grey dusty cloud represented broken
parts of monumental relics, imposed by never-questioned conventional
architecture wisdom, I begin to wonder whether it is to be read as pieces of
any physical instance that architecture had to offer so far?
Lev Grossman, How Apple Is Invading Our Bodies, Time Magazine online (2014) http://time.com/3318655/
apple-watch-2/ (Acessed September 2014)
176
76
Fig. 38: Explosion, final sequence in Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1968)
77
For a long time, it has been the case that institutions are supported not
only by their built enclosures or furniture-like equipment, but also with
their telecommunication systems and computer software backgrounds.
As William J. Mitchell stressed in his book City of Bits: Space, Place, and the
Infobahn nearly 20 years ago; the digital, electronic and virtual peculiarities
of the latter have been successfully competing with traditional properties
of 'four walls keeping the roof up'. In that sense, classical facades are
increasingly substituted with digital interfaces, art galleries with virtual
museums, and theatres with computer operated infrastructures of fun.
Hospitals are gradually losing their meaning with a rise of telemedicine, just
as prisons face challenges due to CCTV surveillance. Multiplicities of current
social, political, economic and cultural problems have greatly moved into
cyberspace, a virtual arena in which the value of digital memory becomes
treated as equal to the value of land. Yet why are we, architects, fortified
within remaining walls of tangible environments, still participating in
acrimonious discussions of whether the roof should be pitched or flat?
fully responded to the new potentials and demands of the period he was
wholeheartedly living in and envisioning for. However, I suspect that Price
himself would have joined me in concluding that, fifty years later, his work
is 'interesting, but slightly outdated!'177 Whilst I believe that his radical and
profound contribution to reconceptualising architecture might best be
understood in terms of Zhou En Lais comment when asked to estimate the
influence of the French Revolution 'I dont know yet, it is too soon to tell',178
what I have actually learnt from Cedric Price is almost to forget about him,
continue to live in the present and confront its timely issues, always with one
eye looking forward to what is yet to come. To survive in a world regulated
by new, unforeseeable and dematerialised rules of play, I need to roll up my
sleeves and react to the fundamental problem of an obsolescent twentyfirst-century man living in the environment that he has, himself, created. This
is a tribute to one obsolescent man who attempted to respond to his own
anticipated environment and may still sparkle, from time to time, with a few
guardian hints about how I can proceed in mine.
His [Prices] library came with his archive to Canadian Centre for Architecture. In the Archive library you
would call one of the books and it would have CP on it; it would be one of Prices books and you would go
to the heading and there was always a comment in the front of it. On his copy of 'Being Digital' by Nicholas
Negroponte, Prices comment was Good - but dated. CP.
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
178
In 1972, when Zhou En Lai (Premier of China) was asked how he estimated the impact of French Revolution,
he responded instantly: I dont know yet, it is too soon to tell.
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, 08.08.2014
177
79
81
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
82
83
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Schrijver, Lara. Radical Games: Popping the Bubble of 1960s Architecture. Rotterdam,
New York: NAi Publishers, 2009.
Whiteley, Nigel. Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future. London: The MIT
Press, 2003.
Wilken, Rowan. Teletechnologies, Place, and Community. New York, Oxon: Routlege
2011.
Banham, Reyner. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London: Architectural
Press, 1960.
Carroll, Lewis. Alices Adventures in Wonderland. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd,
1906.
Dickens, Charles. The Pickwick Papers. Reissue edition, Cambridge: Penguin Classics,
2000.
ARTICLES / JOURNALS
Banham, Reyner. A Home Is Not a House. Art in America, 53 (2) (April 1965), p.70
79.
Mathews, Stanley. From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price.
London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007.
Banham, Reyner. Machine Aesthetic. Architectural Review, 117 (700) (April 1955),
p.225-228.
William J. Mitchell. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, Mass.:
The MIT Press, new edition 1996.
Banham, Reyner. The Triumph of Software. New Society 12 (138) (October 1968),
p.629-630.
Obrist ,Hans Ulrich + Price, Cedric. The Conversation Series. Kln: Walther Knig,
2009.
85
Mathews, Stanley, The Fun Palace: Cedric Prices experiment in architecture and
technology, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 3 (2) (2005), http://
www.bcchang.com/transfer/articles/2/18346584.pdf (Accessed August 2014)
FILMS
INTERVIEWS
Author interview with Dr. Barnabas Calder, historian of architecture specializing in
British architecture since 1945; curator of the 'Cedric Price: Think the Unthinkable'
exhibition, 13.08.2014
INTERNET SOURCE
Author interview with Dennis Crompton, architect and part of Archigram group,
11.08.2014
Cedric Price: Architect-thinker who built little but whose influence was talismanic,
The Independent online (2003), http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/
cedric-price-36932.html (Accessed March 2014)
Author interview with Tim Abrahams, writer and critic; former Editor-in-Chief at the
Canadian Centre for Architecture, 08.08.2014
Tom Rowley, Can the conservatives save the Gay Hussar, Labours canteen?,
The Telegraph online (2013) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/
restaurants/10508426/Can-the-conservatives-save-the-Gay-Hussar-Labourscanteen.html?mobile=basic (Accessed May 2014)
EXHIBITIONS
86
OTHER
Archigram
http://designmuseum.org/design/archigram (Accessed July 2014)
Cedric Price, Technology Is The Answer But What Was The Question? lecture (1979),
http://architecture-blog.pidgeondigital.com/excerpt-from-a-talk-by-cedric-price87
88