Cedric Price: Radical Pragmatist, in Pursuit of Lightness

Abstract

From the time he formed his practice in 1960, Cedric Price was a persistent critic of normative architecture. He was less interested in buildings—Price deemed them fixed, static, inflexible, and obsolete—and more intent on structures that could anticipate future change and use. He also believed that new technologies were imperative to innovating the built environment and facilitating social progress. This is why Price worked to bring attention to the potential of “air,” which until then had been mostly invisible to architecture. In his pursuit of lightness, this essay argues that Price recast the role of the architect as a radical pragmatist.

Acknowledgements

This essay developed out of an invited roundtable presentation that I gave at "An Afternoon with Cedric Price no. 2" on February 9, 2017 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. Previous research at the Cedric Price Archive at the CCA was partially funded by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Office of Research, Arts and Humanities Research Travel Award. Special thanks go to Journal of Architectural Education theme editor Doug Jackson for his indispensable feedback.

Notes

1 “The series started in October 1970 with an Adrian George cover of Price as an inflatable blowing himself up through a cigar-like tube. It ended in January 1972 with another George drawing on the back cover of the architect waving cheerily to the caption ‘Goodbye Cedric.’” Peter Murray, “Plus ça change…,” in Cedric Price, The Square Book (West Sussex: Wiley Academy, 2003), 16.

2 “These pages can be taken out of the magazine, filed, recollated, added to or thrown away by the reader; there is space allowed for the reader's own comments and filing code, thus allowing the feature to become a flexible, user-serviced information pool in the best Cedric Price tradition.” Peter Murray, “Introduction” to Cedric Price Supplement, Architectural Design October 1970, 507.

3 Price also provides a foreword to his readers, explaining that he and Murray have “selected … a slightly ragged and rum collection” organized by themes. Cedric Price, Cedric Price Supplement, Architectural Design, October 1970, 507.

4 Murray, “Introduction” (note 2), 507.

5 As demonstrated by projects like Fun Palace (1960–66), Detroit Think Grid (1968–71), and Generator (1976–80), Price's obsession with temporary, flexible, interactive, and networked environments challenged the definition of what constituted architecture, at times calling into question the appropriateness of buildings altogether.

6 “Fun Palace as an anti-building; Price as an anti-architect.” Mark Wigley, as stated in his roundtable presentation on the Fun Palace at “An Afternoon with Cedric Price, Part 2,” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, February 9, 2017. Notes taken by Whitney Moon. Stanley Mathews also points out that Price referred to himself as an “anti-architect.” See Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2009), 73.

7 Price scholar Samantha Hardingham suggests a certain dimension of pragmatism in the architect's acquisition of knowledge. She writes, “Price said of his own reading habits that he liked the things that others preferred to avoid, ‘boring stuff like governmental reports and social surveys’ that kept his general knowledge and specialist vocabulary up to date.” See Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, 1952–2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective, vol. 1, Projects (London: Architectural Association; Montreal: Canadian Center for Architecture, 2017), 15.

8 OED Online, s.v. “radical, adj. and n.,” December 2016, Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/157251?rskey=Wtdadd&result=1 (accessed February 25, 2017).

9 OED Online, s.v. “pragmatist, n. and adj.,” December 2016, Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/149296?redirectedFrom=pragmatist (accessed February 25, 2017).

10 “Price's drawings and buildings give little quarter to architectural convention or to aesthetic expectations. The expedient simplicity of his designs took precedence over aesthetic considerations.” Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space (note 6), 18.

11 Murray, “Introduction” (note 2), 507.

12 Ibid.

13 Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space (note 6), 8.

14 “His [Price's] philosophy of architectural indeterminacy and personal empowerment developed out of his understanding of the potential of architecture as a means of negotiating the social and economic uncertainties of post-war Britain.” Ibid., 242.

15 “In the hands of a younger generation weary of the stale orthodoxies advanced by aging Modernist heroes, classically unified formal and ideological strategies began to break down, disintegrated and fractured forms became for the first time de rigeur, and architecture was pixelated into new media, as buildings became tents, travesties, and telegrams.” Todd Gannon, “Theory and Design in the Last Machine Age” (doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2011), 23.

16 This is what Stanley Mathews refers to as “Price's search for a new definition of architecture and the role of the architect.” Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space (note 6), 15.

17 Price, AD, October 1970 (note 3), 522.

18 Ibid.

19 Price adds, “Having operated these charts for four years I find them frighteningly useful in determining my appetites and blind spots.” Ibid.

20 Cedric Price, “Insert 25,” Archigram 8—Popular Pak, 1968.

21 “The existing built environment, however well designed and rebuilt in the future, will not provide the human servicing it should to the urban community until it is wholeheartedly recognised that a high rate of destruction of the existing fabric is a positive contributor [to] the quality of beneficial social change.” Cedric Price, “The Built Environment: The Case against Conservation,” in Environmentalist, 1981. Reprinted in Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, 1952–2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective, vol. 2, Articles and Talks (London: Architectural Association; Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2017), 325.

22 It should be noted that although pneumatics reached a high degree of popularity among the architectural counterculture by the late 1960s and early 1970s, Price was rather early to enter into a conversation about air structures (ca. 1962).

23 “I am suggesting that Price's role for technology is intimately linked with his critique of architecture. He looks to technologies which can expose inadequacies in the conventional wisdom of architecture while at the same time celebrating the possibilities of thoughtful supportive environments.” Royston Landau, “A Philosophy of Enabling,” in Price, The Square Book (note 1), 9.

24 In 1979, Price gave a lecture entitled “Technology Is the Answer, but What Was the Question?” Prerecorded talk, Pidgeon Audio Visual, 1979. Transcript reprinted in Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 2 (note 21), 328.

25 “As was not the case for most of his contemporaries,” Hadas A. Steiner explains, “Price's involvement with the technical aspects of pneumatics was thorough.” He adds, “The interest that Price exhibited in air structures was consistent with his aversion to the notion of formal perfection and ambition to introduce temporality into the finished architectural product.” Steiner, Beyond Archigram: The Structure of Circulation (New York: Routledge, 2009), 161.

26 For instance, in a 1971 edition of Stewart Brand's infamous Whole Earth Catalog—a grassroots, DIY, countercultural magazine—Brand questioned the viability of pneumatics, stating, “Inflatables are trippy, cheap, light, imaginative space, not architecture at all. They're terrible to work in. The blazing redundant surfaces disorient; one wallows in space. When the sun goes behind a cloud you cease cooking and immediately start freezing. Environmentally, what an inflatable is best at is protecting you from a gentle rain. Wind wants to take the structure with it across the country, so you get into heavy anchoring operations.” The Last Whole Earth Catalog (Menlo Park, CA: Portola Institute, 1971), 107.

27 Though never built, Fun Palace proposed an inflatable interior environment.

28 Price and Newby, Air Structures Research, text on board, Cedric Price Fonds, CCA: DR1995:0213:015, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.

29 As Price explains in his Cedric Price Supplement for Architectural Design, “The dracones employed were standard products already in production for the transport of fresh water etc. whereas the linking fringe required further design.” Price, AD (note 3), 508.

30 “Why should an ARCHITECT be interested?” Ibid.

31 Cedric Price, “Has the Architectural Profession a Future?” presented at the Conference on “The Architect's Future,” Architectural Association, London, March 6, 1975. Republished in Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 2 (note 21), 239.

32 Cedric Price, “Pneumatics: A Key to Variable Hybrid Structuring” in Proceedings of the 1st International Colloquium on Pneumatic Structures (Stuttgart, 1967), 18–20. Essay republished in Ant Farm's Inflatocookbook (1973).

33 See Price, “Pneumatics” (note 32), 18.

34 Ibid. Price states, “This conference must increase the content and frequency of exchange between scientists, engineers, manufacturers, architects, planners and social administrators.”

35 Otto's “list of very important tasks to be worked on: 1. Order, definitions, terms. 2. Forms, geometric shapes of different kinds. 3. Geodesic problems of development surfaces. 4. Fabrics: strength, creeping, joining, elasticity, translucency, thermal insulation, sound insulation, fire proofing. 5. Life loads, wind, snow, aerodynamic problems. 6. Air: necessary pressures, blowers, controls, weather forecasts, doors, safety exits. 7. Model analysis: wind, tensile stresses, geometric stability, elastic behaviour. 8. Special fields: containers, double wall systems, balloons, sails, city covers, and outer space applications. 9. Improvement of the stability of prefabricated buildings (methods of measuring stresses and forces, and life loading). 10. Panic control (people, fire, exits, city life).” Frei Otto, “Closing Remarks,” in Proceedings (note 32), 179.

36 It should be noted that in her recently published book, Samantha Hardingham provides an illustration of “Stage One” of Air Structures: A Survey, dated May 1969. See Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 1 (note 7), 208.

37 Cedric Price, Frank Newby, and Robert H. Suan, Air Structures: A Survey (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), iii.

38 As summarized later in their Air Structures Bibliography (1972), Air Structures: A Survey: “Compiled in 1968, this survey presents a thorough assessment of the state of the knowledge and experience current at that time. Topics dealt with include principles, applications, technology, costs, R & D, design methods and specifications together with index of major world manufacturers of air shelters, recommendations for building and safety codes and areas of future usefulness and development. 241 pages.”

39 According to Filip Tejchman, who has written extensively about the role of manuals in architecture and engineering, “Air Structures serves as an example of a retroactive mode of design research—one that instrumentalized a collection of precedents to form a novel construction methodology.” Tejchman adds, “Probability based on similarity is the underlying concept, as the outcomes of disparate design research by a panoply of architects, engineers and scientists are indexed into a distinct and coherent body of knowledge. The publication bolsters the idea that disciplinary expertise is fluid, and reminds us that shifts in what constitutes core expertise are contingent on the very instruments that establish reference standards, norms and conventions.” Tejchman, “A New Normal,” ARPA, May 2, 2016, http://www.arpajournal.net/a-new-normal/ (accessed February 5, 2017).

40 Price writes, “They [Laing Physikalisch-Technisches Forschungsinstitut] believe they have solved the problem of corrosion by ultraviolet light, which changes the optical properties of the membrane causing yellowing. The membrane consists of three layers.” Cedric Price, Air Structures Research, Visit Notes (page 1/3), Laing Physikalisch-Technisches Forschungsinstitut, Stuttgart, Germany, June 26, 1968, Cedric Price Fonds, CCA: DR2004:0102, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.

41 See Appendices I: Manufacturer and II: Research and Development Establishments in Price, Newby, and Suan, Air Structures (note 37), 157–238.

42 As Price and Newby explain, “The survey will help to disseminate available information on air structures, and to point out existing shortfalls.” Ibid., v.

43 Ibid. In the “Synopsis” page, they add: “After a brief history of air structures, the detailed information of our present survey is presented with comments. This covers current applications, technology, costs, research and development work, and statutory regulations. Preliminary recommendations are made on the design of some air structures.” They continue: “This survey will help to disseminate available information on air structures, and to point out existing shortfalls. In the appendices, information is given relating to the major manufactures of air shelters in the world and to research and development establishments.”

44 Price and Newby conclude their report by stating, “The potential of air structures is apparent but further work should be undertaken soon if this potential is to be realised.” Ibid., 75.

45 The table of contents of Air Structures: A Survey offers a glimpse into both the technological and cultural dimensions of their research project. It includes but is not limited to: definitions, a history of pneumatics, principles, applications, technology, costs, methods, illustrations, and a detailed list of manufacturers. Ibid., vii.

46 Cedric Price and Frank Newby, Air Structures Bibliography (London: Lightweight Enclosures Unit, 1972).

47 Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 1 (note 7), 209.

48 It should be noted that as illustrated in the provided figure, entry B 0006 in Air Structures Bibliography (note 46) features Price and Newby's own Air Structures: A Survey (note 37).

49 Price and Newby, Air Structures Bibliography (note 46), 1.

50 “It's nothing more than a municipal umbrella, but it's operated for the wellbeing of the people who forgot to bring their own umbrellas.” Price, “Technology Is the Answer, but What Was the Question?” 1979. Transcript reprinted in Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 2 (note 21), 327.

51 The design featured “triple-tubed protection with intermediate ‘gutters’. Peripheral rain spill is accommodated by existing shop canopies.” Price, The Square Book (note 1), 75.

52 These criteria were ranked by the client, David Keddie, in a questionnaire provided by Price and Newby. See Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 1 (note 7), 367.

53 “The point of playing with the existing environment by means of these lightweight—no, light-high technology—is to enable those people (and I am not one of them) who feel that a great amount of the built environment should be retained forever, at least the possibility of distorting it in the way in which one could distort a lot of our more dreary cathedrals by painting them again as they originally were.” Price, “Technology Is the Answer” (note 50), 1979. See Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 2 (note 21), 329.

54 Hardingham, Cedric Price Works, vol. 2 (note 21), 329.

55 Frank Newby in Price, The Square Book (note 1), 75.

56 “Reservations on the aesthetics as from a distance it could look like a Martian Caterpillar.” David Keddid to Cedric Price, May 12, 1972, Cedric Price Fonds, CCA: DR1995:0256:026:001, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.

57 Newby was invited in 1972, and Price in 1973, “with the aim of producing a Code of Practice for air supported structures.” Professor Rawlings (University of Sheffield) to Frank Newby, December 11, 1972, Cedric Price Fonds, CCA: DR2004:0219, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.

58 This was a key moment for the duo. In addition to assembling a pneumatic manual, and compiling an index for the advancement of lightweight structures, they were on the path toward institutionalizing air structures.

59 Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. Barbara Luigia La Penta (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), 107.

60 According to the Oxford English dictionary, an auteur is defined as “a creative artist whose work is perceived to reflect a highly individual vision or innovative approach, or is (self-consciously) presented as such.” OED Online, s.v. “auteur, n. and adj.,” December 2016, Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/249941?redirectedFrom=auteur (accessed February 27, 2017).

61 Price believed that a building wasn't always the answer, or necessary. For example, Molly Wright Steenson writes, “Famous for statements like, ‘Technology is the answer, but what was the question?’ and for suggesting that architecture might not be the right solution to a problem—‘Maybe you don't need a new house. Maybe you need to leave your wife.’—Price questioned the very conditions and requirements of architecture.” See Steenson, “Cedric Price's Generator,” Crit 69 (Spring 2010): 14, http://www.aias.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Crit69_Press1.pdf (accessed May 29, 2017).

62 See Mathews, From Agit-Prop to Free Space (note 6), 41–42.

63 Cedric Price, Re: CP, ed. Hans Ulrich Obrist (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003), 31.

64 Ibid.

65 Wigley, roundtable presentation (note 6).

66 Price, “Technology Is the Answer” (note 50), 328.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Whitney Moon

Author Biography

Whitney Moon is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she teaches architectural history and theory, as well as design studios. Her research interests reside in twentieth- and twenty-first-century art and architecture, with an emphasis on theatricality, performance, and ephemeral works. Currently, she is working on a collection of essays about the rise and fall of pneumatic architecture in the 1960s and 1970s entitled “Who Let the Air Out?” Moon's recent writings have been published in Room One Thousand, PRAXIS, Dialectic, and Journal of Architectural Education, and she has collaborated on the design and curation of architectural exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal and ACE Gallery in Los Angeles. A registered architect in California and Wisconsin, Moon earned her PhD in architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her BArch from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.