Samantha Hardingham is an English educator and architectural historian, and lecturer at the School of the Architectural Association in London.
The text of the lecture was provided by the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design.
Today I will talk about my hero from the past, present and future. His name is Cedric Price. I have written several books about him and his work. Today is a special day for me, today [September 11, 2018] Cedric would have turned 84 years old.
This is my last book. "Cedric Price: A Retrospective Towards the Future." I would say that this book is the complete collection of his works, weighs almost six kilograms.
I was warned that not much is known about Cedric Price in Russia. As far as I know, he has never been to Russia. Therefore, I feel a great responsibility, as if I have to introduce you to the man I consider to be a giant of architecture.
Interesting point: Price very clearly divided his personal and professional life. This is paradoxical for a person who has always collaborated, always created everything together.
His favorite advice, which he gave to everyone, including me: “A person should not be complete. You need to understand what you are missing, what kind of help you need, and then contact the appropriate specialist."
Cedric changed his mind magnificently - it was his great talent. He said that we are human precisely because we can change our minds.
It seems to me that it would be useful for every architect to know who Cedric Price is. I will talk about his education, how he was formed as an architect, in what era he grew up. I will talk about what influenced him. I will talk about the key projects in which Cedric proved himself to be an outstanding architect.
Cedric Price was the architect of the present. By definition, this means that he was the architect of the future too. He lived and worked according to the assertion that the future is happening now. I would say that Cedric Price was very generous. He left behind great ideas, which were then picked up by others - rethought and implemented.
Cedric loved design, loved architecture. Here's an example of how much he loved design. Every birthday, every election day, every Christmas, he changed the design of his office with the help of a professional designer.
Cedric didn't really like architects. He loved people first of all. That is why all his projects are aimed at making life easier for people who will live in these buildings.
He tried to come up with an architecture that could adapt to the behavior of people, both individual and collective. Then it was called after Cedric Price the architectural enabler, architecture that allows people to express themselves. As far as I remember, […] was the first to come up with this term, and Cedric used a slightly different phrase, anticipatory architecture.
The book Good and Bad Manners in Architecture by the urbanist Tristan Edwards (1924) greatly influenced Cedric and the way he thought about architecture. The author of this essay ranks the arts by value, and as you can see, architecture is only in fourth place here. Above is the art of creating human beauty, the art of good manners and the art of dressing up beautifully. Here, first of all, they thought about living people, not about cars. Cedric also thought that architecture is secondary, and it is people who are primary.
Price was born in 1934 in Stone, Staffordshire. This county was called the pottery region because there were so many factories that produced ceramics until 1960. Price was the son of architect Arthur J. Price. His family was very closely associated with the ceramic industry. Many of Price's relatives worked as designers or technicians in such factories. […] In particular, what he knew about architecture was how they built buildings, barracks, which were used by the army in World War II. Barracks were also located in Staffordshire. He visited them a lot, since the soldiers lodged near his family home.
This is one of Cedric's notebooks. He was nine years old at that moment. Here he came up with an inflatable building. 1940s, very innovative idea, I must say, with traditional English windows. He wanted to combine something very traditional and something very innovative. He was interested in how the structure of a house can be turned upside down, how you can look at the building as such in a different way. In particular, what he thought about was temporary buildings, that is, buildings, pavilions that were created for a certain period of service.
The second phenomenon where Price saw the future was Price's father. Arthur Price taught Cedric to draw. Price liked it very much. His father worked as an architect in the 1930s, he was one of those who carried out the largest modernist project in Great Britain - the Odeon cinema chain. It was a British cinema chain owned by Oscar Deutsch. When I talk about this project, I am referring to modernism as an architectural style and as the idea of a fully industrialized world. It was this idea that spread throughout all parts of Britain along with the corresponding architecture. In fact, the Odeon style is, strictly speaking, Art Deco. But at the same time, the cladding and, in general, the way this building looks, rhymes with the international style that was formed at that time and which is directly related to European modernism. Britain was changing very quickly at that moment, abandoning its colonial past, and moving forward into a glamorous future, borrowing, among other things, the aesthetics of Hollywood. It is very important to remember this. All this happened when Cedric was a little boy. It was an amazing period of change that he saw because his father was directly involved in creating such a new architecture.
In 1933, a group of British architects and researchers MARS (Modern Architectural Research Group) was founded in order to promote the principles of modernism in design and architecture. The group is now remembered primarily for the London plan they drew up in 1938. The project was led by an emigrant from Germany, the architect Arthur Korn, who later became Price's professor at the Architectural Association. Maxwell Fry also worked on these projects. Price worked for him after graduating from AA. Co-author of the plan, designer Felix Samueli worked with designer Frank Newby, who later became a key partner and friend of Price. These people were very important to Cedric Price, to his personal history. It is very important what they did in the 1930s, and what influenced Cedric's ideas.
Here is a plan of London - this is a caterpillar with legs. This team was greatly influenced by Nikolai Milyutin, his ideas for a linear city. […] The plan was quite radical, including with regard to the transport scheme, communications, public transport system. Although Cedric Price was only four years old when this new London plan was published, as I said, this plan later influenced him greatly. Many of the authors of this plan later became Price's teachers. Moreover, ideas related to communications, how the city of the future should look, then strongly influenced Price, and even led to the fact that he invented a new name for the city of the XXI century. It seemed to him that the city of the future would be a very dynamic system, consisting of various political and material structures. He called the city of the XXI century "concentrate". Let's see if the city of the XXI century will really be like this.
The future appeared to Price again in a different form. It's 1951, and as a teenager he gets to the Festival of Great Britain. This is a nationwide event. As you can imagine, two World Wars ended, and the idea arose to hold a festival so that people would forget the past and concentrate on the future. An important structure there was called "Skylon" - it was the first cable structure built in Europe. I am convinced that such projects have greatly influenced Price. I came to this conclusion after thoroughly familiarizing myself with his legacy.
Felix Samueli was the author of the Skylon project, and Frank Newby was the youngest engineer to work with him on this task. You see, another connection has arisen with the later work of Cedric Price. Here we stand under the Skylon and look at the Festival Pavilion of the Sea and Ships [Basil Spence]. […] Price's biggest project is Fun Palace, the "Entertainment Palace" that you may have heard of. Here is an echo of that "Pavilion of the Sea and Ships", which we saw on the previous slides.
Let's go further. 1952, Price enters Cambridge, his education is associated not only with architecture, but also with art too. In general, he is taught how to use the principles of classical architecture for small-scale projects.
How did you study at Cambridge? Each student belonged to one college or another. People of different specialties could study at the college: architects, literary scholars, physicists, and so on. The college was a place for communication, for creating a common discourse, which was also very important for Price's subsequent work.
On his weekends, Cedric was busy with his own projects, not academic. These are temporary structures, modular design, the creation of objects from prefabricated parts, from modules. It is worth noting the form of submitting this project: on just one page, all the pictures fit together, everything is very clear, clear and concise.
After Cambridge, Price entered the School of the Architectural Association, 1955–1957. He was working on a project for a new Oldham Center in Manchester. In the 1950s - 1960s, heavy industry went into a crisis, recession, and even then in England, redevelopment of industrial areas began. Among his teachers were great historians: Nikolaus Pevsner, John Summerson, Arthur Korn.
For Korn, it seems to me that no idea was too stupid. He always tried to push his students to search for completely new ideas in architecture, in design, to create something that has never existed. Korn strongly believed in the beauty and potential of a plan, a drawing, and that an idea, embodied in stone, could produce a real resonance.
Fun Palace, the Palace of Entertainment (1960-1966) - the first large-scale work of Cedric Price, and the first project, which was later published in his big book of ideas. It seems to me that for Price this project was a kind of joke. He joked a lot. This is a project that called into question everything: what is a building, what is the role of an architect, what is education, what is entertainment, what is the role of technology in each of these aspects.
The idea for the Entertainment Palace came from the visionary theater director Joan Littlewood (1914–2002). She created what then became
by the Theater Workshop troupe. Joan was one of the first to use the technique of participation, she began to include the audience in what is happening on stage. She originally formed a troupe that toured constantly throughout the UK. In 1953–1979 her troupe was based at the Royal Stratford East Theater in east London. Her theater attracted audiences of very different social backgrounds in an attempt to reject the commercial theater of London's West End, which was designed only for the wealthy. Littlewood was a very brave woman, a revolutionary. She challenged everything she was told. Here is what she writes: “I am not a professional filmmaker. I don't know what a professional director is. I haven't seen a single play since I was 15. All the time I look only at what is happening on the street. Because that's where I live - on the street. In 1958, Leitwood wrote an article that described the ideas of making culture, science, and education accessible to everyone. Littlewood envisioned University of the Streets as the main place to learn how to use different tools and raise children - or just lie back and gaze at the sky.
Littlewood contacted Cedric Price directly for the project. They talked as a filmmaker and architect, trying to figure out what they could create together. Price saw the potential for his own architectural research in this project. He thought about how to create a space where people can control their material environment. How to make architecture both inside and outside accessible to people, so that the building, its structure and infrastructure can serve as a catalyst for everything that happens around.
This is a note that Price wrote for himself - the concept of the project, such a brief. See, it says antiarchitect at the top. He used paper with the sign "architect", he added "anti" to this word. He wondered if an architect was needed at all in this project. This was a very important part of Cedric Price's philosophy: how architecture can define life, aid learning, promote relaxation. It was the second goal that the Entertainment Palace was supposed to serve.
It seems to me that the most important thing here is written at the top - to arrange the maximum number of forms of leisure in one place. A challenge that is very difficult for any designer, for any architect. Quite quickly, the Palace of Entertainment grew into one of the first examples of experimental interdisciplinary collaboration. He united various architects and artists around him. About 60 people worked on this project, as far as I remember. Buckminster Fuller was involved in this project, which was important to Price. So are Gordon Pask and Robin McKinon Wood.
Among the authors were scientists, politicians, journalists who worked with a very wide range of issues, and they helped to rethink the project of the Entertainment Palace. The palace as a project was originally based on communication, on numerous feedback loops. It had to be as horizontal as possible. The problematic, the challenges formulated by Cedric Price, were then rethought, they were discussed many times by Price's partners in this project.
To quote one of the first reports on this project: “Each project somehow conveys ideals in architecture, sculpture, painting, literature and in spontaneous self-expression on the street, in public buildings and in the workplace. Leisure and freedom from war, freedom from want influenced the development of arts and crafts. We have now entered a new era of leisure and freedom from war, we do not have sufficient tools to enjoy it. One of our first needs is a space where we can work and play. The space should be surrounded by water, rivers, there should be movement in it. This is a space that you can enjoy. It should not dictate what we can do there. Already in those years, such ideas were available. While traditional views were taught in Cambridge itself, such ideas have already emerged in informal conversations.
For Littlewood, education was the key to creating a more egalitarian society. She proposed to abandon the standard model of schooling. She wrote that we must unlearn what we have been taught. She advocated abandoning formal directive learning. Littlewood wrote that the Palace of Entertainment is so wrong that it will only be correct in the future, will be very appropriate for the future.
The entertainment palace was to become a city toy. Toy is a word that Cedric Price used a lot. This is something you can interact with, communicate with, play with. Here is what he writes at a time when most of the artifacts of systems and institutions were changing more and more rapidly: “Lack of constructive progress in basic problems such as movement, entertainment, leisure activities is not just sad, it is dangerous. The potential of urban life in the twentieth century is now not revealed due to those dull buildings where people live now."
Remember, in the beginning I showed one drawing, the first sketch. Cedric constantly rethought how this palace would look like, how it would appear to the public. Six years later, rather ghostly drawings appeared, I would even say, ominous. They help us understand how Cedric Price's thought evolved. He constantly thought about this project, this project appeared a lot in the media of that time, but he very tightly controlled the visual component that was published in the media. On the other hand, Price refers to traditional architectural proportions. That is why it is very important to see his projects in development, in them there is an evolution of thought and an evolution of material.
The Palace of Entertainment is one of the first buildings in the UK to be built with industrially produced materials. Inscribed in this plan is the plan of the Colosseum, Cedric Price draws on examples from the past, to traditional architectural spaces. […] This building should be 120 feet high and 375 feet wide. This is a rough outline of how it should have looked. How was this project conceived? It was supposed to consist of several towers, which are built from very basic materials, in particular reinforced concrete. As you can see, the towers are interconnected by a multi-level structure; inside the towers, elevators and staircases were to be installed, which allowed a person to move freely through this space. This building could accommodate very different events, from a theatrical performance to a banquet, whatever.
It was assumed that five major events could be held in this palace at the same time. […] To achieve the required flexibility, different blocks could be constructed very quickly from modules. It should be a modular architecture that can be built and rebuilt. The section of the building shows several different levels: cinema, gallery, restaurant, promenade. There were permanent blocks, such as a cinema, there were temporary blocks. It is important that the building was to be located next to the River Thames. It was very important for the architect that this building would stand practically on the water.
Above was a crane that would help technicians move these modules. Cedric wanted the building to remain alive even after the completion of construction, it could constantly be rebuilt, rebuilt. And, you see, people could move freely within these blocks. It was very important to Cedric that he thought about the shape of the constituent parts, and not about the general shape of the building.
The Entertainment Palace had a very difficult fate. They have already begun to develop a specific site, but unfortunately, this project has not been implemented. An advertising campaign to promote the project was unsuccessful.
The Generator, a Cedric project created ten years later (1976-1980). It has to do with the idea of a grid. This is the first smart home in history to be controlled by microchips. The microchip was controlled by this computer - one of the first. It is important to note that the Entertainment Palace was supposed to be gigantic. Interestingly, this is more of an idea than the building itself. Sometimes the idea is more important than the building. An idea can be stored on something as small as a microchip. It is an exercise in how technology, cultural appropriation, assimilation and application can evolve over time and offer us a new space to live.
Question from the audience: Why was Cedric so obsessed with temporary constructs? Pneumatic casings. Was this due to time and the lack of cheap capital building structures? Or was it his conscious choice, vision of architecture?
Samantha Hardingham: Both the first and the second. The combination of his time, what he saw around him, that era, technologies, how they developed; temporary modular buildings were widespread then. What Cedric did not try to do was create a universal, all-encompassing theory of architecture. This was not his task. He was interested in trying new things.
As for his ideas, he deviated from the architectural tradition, it seemed to him that architecture was responding too slowly to its era, changing too slowly. It seems to me that, first of all, he reacted to the military context, two wars took place in Europe at the beginning of the century, when barracks, temporary structures were assembled and dismantled, and this led him to the thought: why cannot civilian buildings be temporary? But this was not his instruction - how to act.
Question from the audience: I'm used to the fact that architects are very smart people, but often boring or very immersed in their projects, everyone wears black and so on. Since Cedric dedicated his life to the Entertainment Palace project, was it fun? What kind of person was he?
Samantha Hardingham: He was very witty and his wit saved him in many situations. He knew the history of architecture perfectly, but he never boasted about it. […] He joked a lot, and his contemporaries said that he was a pleasant person, it was interesting to communicate with him, he was constantly rethinking modernity. We would now formulate it this way: he was thinking about the future.
He worked very hard. He had no wife, no children, no kitty, no dog. His whole life was in his work, in architecture. He knew a lot, but did not boast about it in front of his interlocutors, he was always interested in someone else's opinion. He never taught. I would say that he promoted entertaining teaching, a little disarming. He had a position - never to teach anything, but in between times he could talk about the history of architecture. He loved architecture, comics, he painted them, making fun of sometimes very serious problems. I think sometimes a comic is a very good way to talk about some issues. He had a lot of drawings, he was not very fond of architects, he had many friends, caricatures, caricaturists. He was an interesting, pleasant person.
Question from the audience: You have devoted most of your career to one hero, one person. In a sense, we lived part of our life with him. How has he influenced you, your views on architecture, your work?
Samantha Hardingham: Yes, it's really strange that I live my life with such an avatar, but he was a very intelligent person, a visionary, so I never got bored. He influenced me greatly. I teach architecture myself. And I always try to remember how Cedric did what the computer does now with his hands. How he foresaw how technology would develop, but he did everything himself. I think Cedric taught me exactly that. If you cannot tell an idea, you need to draw it, tell it through a plan, through a sketch. And I try to summarize all my ideas to one sentence. If I cannot tell about the project in one sentence, then I simply will not tell anyone about it yet.
Cedric taught me how to think and talk about architecture. And he also taught me to think about what education is. Learning is the right word. I am not called a teacher, but a tutor. This is my official position. I do not point out to students, I rather support them in their own research. It seems to me that it is very important that students can offer a lot of new architecture, I support them in this, and for me this is due to the generosity with which Cedric shared his ideas. And, in particular, this great book of his about architecture. He does not write long texts there. Sometimes it's a picture, sometimes it's one paragraph or just one word. It seems to me that this is just about his generosity, about the fact that he wanted you to make your own project.
Question from the audience: At the beginning of the lecture, you said that architecture is secondary for Cedric, and people are primary. How was this principle revealed in his activities?
Samantha Hardingham: There is a famous story: a client comes to Cedric, who is not very happy with his marriage, decides to build a house and thinks that this house will fix their relationship with his wife. Cedric inspects the site, talks to the client, says goodbye and later writes him a letter: "You don't need a new home, you need a divorce."
This is what I meant when I said that living people were his priority. In every project, he wondered if architecture was needed here at all. He always asked questions, listened to answers, learned as much information as possible about what people are interested in, what they need, what they want. It was an important idea for him - asking people questions, spending time with people.
Another project he was involved in was the renovation and reform of the construction process. He wanted to make the construction site safe for workers in the 1970s. What remained of this project was a stack of pink pieces of paper that recorded what Cedric heard from the multitude of people who worked on the construction project, from the secretary to the Irish builders who came to Britain to work and received very little money. They said that they could not even go to the pub for lunch, as they were all dirty and could not wash anywhere. The secretary said that she, too, cannot go to lunch, because there are only men in pubs. He recorded all this on paper, and it was preserved as his legacy. He listened very carefully to people, while he did not go into any personal details. But he was sincerely interested in how these people live. He found out about people first, and only then came up with an architectural response to this request. Sometimes this response was the construction of a building, such as the Entertainment Palace.
