From Agit-ProP to Free
SPAce: the Architecture
oF cedric Price
By Stanley Matthews
Black Dog Press, £29.95 / $45 (paperback)
Perhaps it’s no surprise then that
Matthews’s book becomes a case study of the
Cedric Price was without doubt one of the
vexed and complex process of getting your
most influential architects of postwar Britain.
outlandish, futuristic proposals realised (at times
Yet he built almost nothing, and his ideas often
hinting that the English visionary of the twenty-
sounded closer to the realm of avant-garde art
first century is going to have just as much trouble
(particularly the environmental experiments of
trying to construct the future today as Price did
the Independent Group and the urbanist work of
in the twentieth), of pushing them through an
the Situationist International) than of architecture.
always-resistant bureaucratic process, rather than
They appeared fanciful, occasionally impractical
on technical aspects of the proposals themselves.
and always wildly optimistic. But as much as he was
But his point seems to be that Price’s stubborn
something of an anti-architect – Price famously
exercises in apparent futility were a necessary
and successfully petitioned the Royal Institute of
step in the construction of a modern architectural
British Architects to change their rules, allowing
avant-garde, one that allowed those who came
members to advise clients to ‘do nothing’ when
in Price’s wake – the high-tech architects, as well
appropriate – Price was also, to a degree, anti-
as people like Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid
art; at least in the then-dominant sense of art as
– to spend years creating a fully theorised and
a lofty and elite aesthetics-driven pastime rather
rounded paper architecture before they ever
than an empowering force of change dealing with
came to build the real thing.
the realities of everyday existence.
In some ways it’s a shame that, apart from a
This book focuses almost exclusively on
first chapter glossing over the world of gangsters,
Price’s two best-known projects – the Fun Palace
actors and politicians that Price frequented during
(1961) and the Potteries Thinkbelt (1964). The first
the early 1960s, this book doesn’t capture much of
is a design for a freewheeling entertainment centre,
Price’s extraordinary personality, or his influence as
a computer-controlled temporary structure (to
a teacher. But those things are arguably beyond
be demolished after ten years) that would have
the scope of this book. What it is really about is a
looked like a shapeless assortment of scaffolding,
period when people believed that the arts could
cranes and Portakabins (Price’s aesthetic was not
seriously and effectively engage with the forces
to have one – something unimaginable in the
of politics and society, and why, ultimately, those
world of today’s starchitects and their ‘signature’
aspirations were doomed to fail. (Although the
buildings) and that was conceived to be as
fact that they are still discussed and analysed
flexible and malleable as possible – designed as
today makes their failure relative.) As Koolhaas,
much by its users as by its architect. The second
who has described Price as ‘a kind of puritanical
is an alternative Open University, utilising defunct
Oscar Wilde’, points out, they were crushed and
railway lines and factories of Staffordshire’s post-
subverted by market forces during the 1980s
industrial wastelands to bring practical higher
and 90s that demanded spectacular but often
education (delivered on trains and in factories)
purposeless buildings like the Guggenheim
to a generation that was either so skilled it was
Bilbao. The question this book leaves us with
leaving the country (as part of the great ‘brain
is whether the kind of engagement that Price
drain’) or so unskilled that it couldn’t gain what
struggled for is any more possible today than it
little employment was around in the wake of
was in his own time. That the answer is ‘probably
By Darby English England’s industrial meltdown.
not’ is something that, following Price’s example,
MIT Press, £19.95 / $30 (hardcover)
we should fight to change. mark rappolt
October_books.indd 5 5/9/07 11:18:55
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