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Cedric Price
Architect (1934-2003)

CEDRIC PRICE (1934-2003) was one of the most visionary architects of the late 20th
century. Although he built very little, his lateral approach to architecture and to
time-based urban interventions, has ensured that his work has an enduring influence
on contemporary architects and artists, from Richard Rogers and Rem Koolhaas, to
Rachel Whiteread.
Taking the view that architecture should be enabling, liberating and life-enhancing, Cedric
Prices approach was all-embracing. From landmark projects such as the 1960-61 Fun Palace,
to designs for Christmas tree lights on Londons Oxford Street, his projects were governed by
the belief that architecture must enable people to think the unthinkable.

London Zoo Aviary

Regents Park, London
1960-1963
Through projects, drawings and teaching, Cedric Price (1934-2003) overturned the notion of
Architects: Lord Snowdon, Frank what architecture is by suggesting radical ideas of what it might be. He saw the role of an
Newby, Cedric Price
architect as that of asking the right questions, as Reyner Banham has commented: the
basic approach is certainly one that appeals to me, a way of really not saying, What kind of
building do you want?, but almost of asking first of all, Do you really need a building?

Axonometric drawing for the

London Zoo Aviary
Regents Park, London
1960-1963
Architects: Lord Snowdon, Frank
Newby, Cedric Price

Price or CP, as he was called was born at Stone in Staffordshire in 1934 to an architect
father, AJ Price, who worked for the firm which built the Odeon cinema chain. CP completed
an undergraduate degree in architecture from Cambridge University in 1955 and a diploma
from the Architectural Association in 1957. After teaching at the AA and working for the
architects Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun, he founded his own practice in 1960 beginning
with the Aviary for London Zoo, designed in 1961 with Lord Snowdon and Frank Newby.
Employing the most advanced technology of the time, they used aluminium castings, stainless
steel forgings, welded aluminium mesh and tension cables to create a light weight structure
giving maximum flying space for the birds.
Prices reputation is chiefly based on the radicalism of his un-built ideas. His 1960-61 project,
The Fun Palace, established him as one of the UKs most innovative and thought-provoking
architects. Initiated with Joan Littlewood, the theatre director and founder of the innovative
Theatre Workshop in east London, the idea was to build a laboratory of fun with facilities for
dancing, music, drama and fireworks. Central to Prices practice was the belief that through
the correct use of new technology the public could have unprecedented control over their
environment, resulting in a building which could be responsive to visitors needs and the many
activities intended to take place there.
As the marketing material suggested, there was a wide choice of activities: Choose what you
want to do or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies,
machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can
see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to whats
happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting or just lie back
and stare at the sky.

Elevation drawing for the London

Zoo Aviary
Regents Park, London
1960-1963
Architects: Lord Snowdon, Frank
Newby, Cedric Price

Using an unenclosed steel structure, fully serviced by travelling gantry cranes the building
comprised a kit of parts: pre-fabricated walls, platforms, floors, stairs, and ceiling modules
that could be moved and assembled by the cranes. Virtually every part of the structure was
variable. Its form and structure, resembling a large shipyard in which enclosures such as
theatres, cinemas, restaurants, workshops, rally areas, can be assembled, moved,
re-arranged and scrapped continuously, promised Price. Although never built, The Fun
Palace was one of his most influential projects and inspired Richard Rogers and Renzo
Pianos early 1970s project, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Price eventually put these ideas into practice in a reduced scale at the 1971 Inter-Action
Centre in the Kentish Town area of north London. The building constitutes an open framework
into which modular, pre-fabricated elements can be inserted and removed as required
according to need. Central to his thesis that a building should only last as long as it was
useful, the centre was designed on condition that it had a twenty year life span and was
accompanied by a manual detailing how it should be dismantled. For Price, time was the
fourth spatial dimension: length, width and height being the other three.

Notes on the London Zoo Aviary

In 1964, Price critiqued the traditional university system in his Potteries Think Belt project.
Regents Park, London
Radically rethinking the basic concept of a university, his proposal provided a mobile learning
1960-1963
resource for 20,000 students utilising the infrastructure of a declining industrial zone. Largely
Design: Cedric Price
in response to the rash of university campuses being built during the 1960s, Prices proposal
transformed the derelict Staffordshire potteries into a realm of higher education, mainly on
railway tracks, creating a widespread community of learning while also promoting economic
growth. His proposal took advantage of local unemployment, a stagnant local housing
programme, a redundant rail network, vast areas of unused, unstable land, consisting mainly

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of old coal-working and clay pits, and a national need for scientists and engineers. It offered a
solution to the need for educational facilities whilst also offering to do something about the
economic and social collapse of the Potteries. Further education and re-education must be
viewed as a major industrial undertaking and not as a service run by gentlemen for the few,
opined Price.
This flexible approach extended to all aspects of his work. Finding ingenious and elegant
solutions for everyday problems he championed anticipatory architecture, firmly believing in
impermanent architecture designed for continual change. Price redefined the role of the
architect as an agent of change, whose main responsibility was to anticipate that, and offer
Fun Palace, an unrealised project new possibilities for society as a whole. Constantly challenging and questioning the accepted
mores of architecture, his approach was witty and irreverent; he famously suggested that the
for East London
man hoping to transform his life with a new house might be better off getting a divorce.
1960-1961
Architect: Cedric Price
Prices desire for Doubt, Delight and Change was clearly demonstrated in his 1984 proposal
for the redevelopment of Londons South Bank. Here he anticipated the London Eye by
suggesting that a giant ferris wheel should be set in a public space extending out onto the
River Thames. Price went on to develop the Magnet series of short-life structures installed in
existing sites that he believed to be misused or underused. For example, he proposed that an
impermanent bridge could offer better access to a railway station and turn the space into
public advantage only to be removed when no longer necessary.

Plan for Potteries Thinkbelt

Staffordshire, England
1965
Architect: Cedric Price

Every aspect of each idea was meticulously researched: as if each idea was to be built. By
engaging with existing economic, political and structural networks, Price explored
architectures potential to nurture change, intellectual growth and social development. To
Cedric Price architecture was not about the finished building but more about an ability to
enable and facilitate change in a changing world and to allow us to think the unimaginable.
Design Museum
BIOGRAPHY
1934 Born in Stone, Staffordshire.
1955 Graduates in architecture from Cambridge University and enrols at the Architectural
Association in London to study for a diploma.

Drawing for Potteries Thinkbelt

Staffordshire, England
1965
Architect: Cedric Price

1956 Invited by Erno Goldfinger to assist together with Victor Pasmore and Helen Philips
to construct the Group 7 installation in the This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art
Gallery in London. There, he meets Frank Newby, a member of Team Ten, as well as Alison
and Peter Smithson. Attends lectures at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and befriends
Reyner Banham.
1958 Becomes a part-time teacher at the Architectural Association, where he will teach for six
years. Also employed by Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun
1959 Meets and befriends the visionary US architect R. Buckminster Fuller.
1960 Founds Cedric Price Architects and starts to develop The Fun Palace with Joan
Littlewood.
1961 Collaborates with Frank Newby and Lord Snowdon on the Aviary at London Zoo.

Drawing for Potteries Thinkbelt

Staffordshire, England
1965
Architect: Cedric Price

1962 Joins the ICA Exhibitions Committee and teaches part time at the Council of Industrial
Design as well as at the AA. Collaborates with Buckminster Fuller on the Claverton Dome and
designs an art gallery for Robert Fraser in London.
1964 Unveils his radical vision of a modern university as a catalyst for economic regeneration
in the Potteries Think Belt.
1969 Publishes Non-plan, a radical rethinking of planning orthodoxy, with the planner Sir Peter
Hall, the critic Reyner Banham and Paul Barker, editor of New Society magazine.
1971 Completes one of his few finished buildings the Inter-Action Centre in Kentish Town,
London.
1971 Founds Polyark Architectural Schools Network.
1984 Presages the London Eye by proposing to construct a giant ferris wheel on the River
Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament.

Drawing for Topolski Screen

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Waterloo, London
1975
Architect: Cedric Price

1997 Presents the Magnet scheme of ten reusable structures.

Drawing for the South Bank
Centre,
London
1984
Architect: Cedric Price

2003 Cedric Prices dies in London.

2005 The Design Museum presents a retrospective of Cedric Price's work in collaboration with
the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
Design Museum
FURTHER READING
Cedric Price: Works II, Architectural Association, 1984 republished as Cedric Price: The
Square Book, Wiley-Academy, 2003
Cedric Price: Opera, edited by Samantha Hardingham, Wiley-Academy, 2003

Drawing for the Pavilion, Lea

Valley, London
2000
Architect: Cedric Price

Re:CP, by Cedric Price with Arata Isozaki, Patrick Keiller and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Birkhauser
Verlag AG, 2003
A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham, Centennial, 1999
Addition, Andrew Holmes + Cedric Price, Architectural Association, 1986
An Alternative View of Kew, Cedric Price, Architectural Association, 1982
Design Museum

Drawing for Cities on the Move

project
Bangkok, Thailand
2000
Design: Cedric Price

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