Previewing Cedric Price
For every building that gets built, countless others fail to get to site, abandoned for thousands of prosaic reasons. That means hard drives full of drawings describing in intimate detail how to construct things that will never get built. Archives of millions of terabytes form virtual parallel versions of the present. Much of the time, architecture is the art of not building. And there have been few who have not built quite so extensively or as influentially as Cedric Price. A selection of his projects go on show at the Design Museum at the end of June. His unique way of looking at the world single handedley steered architecture from dour and worthy 1950s Modernism into something more vital. His influence spread through drawings, writing, teaching, and even a little building � (the aviary at London Zoo, which looks like a gigantic robot Pterodactyl perched on the edge of the Regents Canal, the Interact Centre - a modest stack of Portakabins next to Kentish Town West). Quite frankly, he is the godfather of contemporary architecture� Archigram, Venturi & Scott Brown, OMA, Liebeskind, Hadid et al directly, indirectly or laterally owe Price for signposting what architecture might be and how architects might work in post-modern, consumerist, pop-cultured, complicated times. Even the lucrative careers of sober knights Richard Rogers and Norman Foster are unthinkable without Prices influence. The reason isn�t what he built, but how he thought. Prices work might have been imaginative and utopian, but it was also rooted in an understanding of buildings in the real world. He believed architecture had to embrace contemporary life rather than produce old-fashioned monuments. Which meant rather than aspiring to be timeless edifices, architecture had to become unpredictable, flexible, ephemeral, uncertain, open ended � and through embracing these un-architectural qualities would become fun, liberating, relevant, and useful. As the Design Museums exhibition title says: �Doubt, Delight and Change�. Price more often cast architecture as the problem rather than the solution, arguing that traditional buildings prevented you doing much more than they allowed you to do. He recognised that architecture isn't a thing but a concept - a connection networks of people, organisations and economies that happen to coincide in one place. Importantly, he valued architecture that adds to life, rather than architecture obsessed with its own aesthetic. One of the exhibited projects is the Fun Palace, a project begun in the late fifties, discussed and drawn for five years before being abandoned. It had gigantic ambition - but an ambition that was not exactly clear. It was designed as large chunks of infrastructure - cranes, towers, equipment that would let people hang out, get creative, learn stuff - all in a fluid, experimental manner. Essentially, a great big machine that would help people have fun. Price reworked the modernist idea of architecture as a machine for living in, reflecting our changing relationship with machines - think of the difference between the heavy, noisy, dirty, and lethal machines of a Victorian industry that were about physical power, and the gadgets strewn around todays average home: clean, quiet, fun, sensory, information devices. Though he died in 2003, Cedric Price makes contemporary architects look more conservative than Prince Charles. His broad, human, funny, vision of architecture remains as challenging now as 40 years ago. Cedric Price published in Tank
Doubt, Delight + Change - Design Museum, London
25 June 2005 to 9 October 2005
Posted by anothersam at March 21, 2005 1:12 AM.
Contents:
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Generic Powerpoint Template: Delivering Bad News
The Best New Building In London
Book Review: The Infrastructural City
The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition
Now Showing: John Baldessari Sings Sol LeWitt
Obscure Design Typologies: Life Guard Chairs
Osama bin Laden Cigarette Lighter: Novelty Products as Congealed Culture
Absurd Car Crashes: A Eulogy for J.G. Ballard
Now Showing: Dan Grahams 'Rock My Religion'
This Concrete 'O': On Serotonin, the M25, and the Motorik Picturesque
Church of the Literal Narrative
Philadelphias Floating Architecture
Now Viewing: Married To The Eiffel Tower
Le Corbusiers Image Hoard: Poeme Electronique
Giant American Signs: Original Learning from Las Vegas Footage
Giant Soviet Signs Cut Into Forests
Bricks Melted Into Icicles: Napalm Decorative
C-Labs 'Unfriendly Skies' & 'Bootleg' Volume
2 The Lighthouse: Self Storage & Architectural Hallucinations
Ceci N'Est Pas Une Pipe: Infrastructure as Architectural Subconcious.
Viva Sectional Cinematography!
Now Showing: The Installation of an Irreversible Axis on a Dynamic Timeline
Sim Seasons Greetings! The Rise of Neo-Winter
Geography in Bad, Festive Drag.
Simulations of Industry: High Tech Architecture and Thatcherism
From The Factory to the Allotment: Tony Wilson, Urbanist
Koolhaas HouseLife / Gan Eden: The Revenge of Architectural Media
Ruburb-ric: The Ecologies of the Farnsworth House
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham Redux
Acts of Un-Building: Timelapse Demolitions
Yard Filth: Next Years Hot Look
Stonehenge: A Black Hole At The Heart Of British Architecture
The Popemobile: Mechanised Robes & Motorised Architecture
The Secret Language of Surface
Information Fields: Agriculture as Media
My Bloody Valentine: Sound as Substance
A Cubist Copse: Gehrys Serpentine Pavilion
Spouting Off: Some Thoughts On The Fountainhead
Form Follows Dysfunction: Bad Construction & The Morality of Detail
Vintage Tradeshow Surrealism: International Grune Woche
Moving Houses: Buildings In Motion
Desktop Study: The Strange World of Sports Studio Design
Married to the Eiffel Tower: More Objectum Sexuals
60 Years of The Crazy Horse Memorial
Married to the Berlin Wall: "The Best and Sexiest Wall Ever Existed!"
Inflatable Icebergs: Sublimated Guilt Has Never Been So Fun
The Cinderella Effect: Phantom Architectures of Illumination
Two Deaths and a Retirement: The Strange Shape of British Architecture
If London Were Like New York: Antique Schizo-Manhattanism
If London Were Like Venice: Antique Geo-Poetic Speculations and Hydro-Fantasy
41 Hours in an Elevator: The Movie
NASA: Mapping the Moon with Sport
Lemon Squeezy: Design Tendencies after the Juicy Salif
The Nihilistic Beauty of Weapons Arranged in Patterns
Dogs: Britains Greatest Design Obsession
Detroit Sucks: The Motor Shows Last Gasp
Authentic Replicas: Football and the Franchising of Place
Folk Football: Landscape, Space and Abstraction
A Wishing Well with a Fat Up Pipe
The Camoufluers and the Day-Glo Battleship
Pseudoccino: Instant Coffee Foam
Blown Up: More Inflatable Military Stuff
On Christmas Trees, Folk Forests and Staples Office Supplies
Hampton Courts Shrouded Sculptures
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Form Follows Felony: The Secret Home of the Un-Dead Canoeist.
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James Bond Lives Next Door: Suburban Imagery as Industry
The Ghost of Christmas Futurism
Chapters for an Imaginary Book About Architecture
Shrouded Plinth - Urban Striptease
In the Night Garden - Surreal Landscape of Nostalgia
Kim Jong II, The Great Architect
Place Faking: Instant Heritage for the Thames Gateway
The Marc Bolan Memorial Crash Barrier.
Enjoy The Silence: Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham
In Search of Britains Vehicular History
Scary Suburbanism: Why Horror is at Home in the Suburbs
I Like Your Manifesto, Lets Put it to the Test-o
How to Become a Famous Architect
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The Velvet Underground at the Glass House
Duplikate: Kate Moss on the Production Line of Individuality
Hollow Inside: Starbucks Foam and the Rise of Ambiguous Materials
Revisions to the Architecture of Hell
Crufts: Dogs, Design and Aesthetic Genetics
Eos Airlines: Executive Bubbles over the Atlantic
Google Earths Vertiginous Mapping
Church of the Ascension and Descension
Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles
Reading Lines: Skateboarding and Public Space
Chris Cornish: Prototyping History
The Most Visited Location in the UK
Anything to Feel Weightless Again: The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort
'Its beauty will know no season'
2000 Years of Non Stop Nostalgia. Or How Half Timbering Made Me Whole Again.
Backpeddling into the Future: The Historical-Futurism of British Architecture
Miss Selfridges' Feeling for Fake Snow. The Oxford St. Lights and Why We Need Artificial Winter
New Tory Logo: A Hazy Shade of Politics
Jeff Koons, Rem Koolhaas, Hans Ulrich Obrist at the Serpentine
Celebrity Scents: The Bittersweet Smell of Success
Imperfect Pitch - Football, Space and Landscape
Product Placement: Making the Impossible Possible
Suburban Growth: Matthew Moores Field of Dreams
Perfect Sound Forever: The Secret Function of High End Stereos
A Little Light Product Placement
Some Advice To A Young Designer
Useless Proclamations for a Beautiful City
Topsy Turvy VSBA: Inverted Heros of an Upside Down Avant Guard
Everything Flows: ideological cartography
How Geostationary Was My Valley?
The Psychotic Utopia of the Suburbs and the Suburbanisation of War.
In a Lonely Place - Under Construction
Mach 3 Nitro Gel - Design that's foaming at the mouth.
Marchitecture. Architectural things to do in London this March
What happens when you cross a pen with a car?
Football Pitch: Best of British
The First Cut is the Cheapest - Blenheim Palace: pop architecture that goes for the jugular
Holiday Snap II : Giant Glowing French Balls
Holiday Snap: Canadian War Memorial, Vimy, France
Anatomy of an Architectural News Story
Its All About the Big Benjamins
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The Exploding Concrete Inevitable. Lou Reed and the Casa da Musica
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Berlin 1945 - The Obscene Picturesque
Interview: Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane
An Incredible Smell of Roasting Coffee
Langlands & Bell - The House of Osama Bin Laden
Architectural Criticism gets Sharp
Venturi, Scott Brown and my love that dare not speak its name.
Douglas Coupland: Design and Fiction
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Everything Counts - The Sound of Geography Collapsing.
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