MARISTELLA CASCIATO

MONIQUE ELEB

SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN

SANDY ISENSTADT

0l1}Jr.

lOlls

1\1())) 1~I~NIS1\IS

MARY LOUISE LOBS INGER

REINHOLD MARTIN

FRANCESCA ROGIER

Experimentation
in
Postwar
Architectural
Culture

TIMOTHY M. ROHAN

FELICITY SCOTT

JEAN-LOUIS VIOLEAU

CORNELIS WAGENAAR

CHERIE WENDELKEN

Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal

The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

Centre Canadien d'Architecture/

Canadian Centre for Architecture
and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(OJ >000

PHOTO CREDITS

The Canadian Centre for Architecture

"po rue Baile, Montrbl, Quebec, Canada H3H lS6

Allantic Film and Imaging: figs. 6.9,6.10, Calavas:

fig. 97: CCA Photographic Services: figs. 305, 5.1-5.9,
'0-4; Ian Vriihoftrhe Netherlands Photo Archives:
figs. 11.3-11.7: John Maltby: fig. ,.2; John R. Paollin:
fig. 3-'; Peter Smithson: fig. 3.,.

ISBN 0-.62-0"/208'4 (MIT)

COPYRICHTS

The MIT Press

Five Cambrid~ Center, C.mbri~, MA 02'42

(, Alison and Peter Smithson Architects: figs. ;,I-B, ;.5,

10.6; Arata Iso"'i: figs. 12.7, u.S; Balthazar
cover, figs. 6.2, 6.3: Bertha RudofSL),: figs. 9.2,
9.4; Courtesy of Kevin Roche John Kindeloo and
Associales: figs. 6.9,6.10; IBM Corporation; figs. 6.1,
64 6.6-<i.8; Immtut gta, ETIl Zurich: fig. l.7'
Ian Vriihoftrhe Netherlands Photo Archives: cover,
figs. ILl, 11.2, 11.8; lean-Louis Cohen, Paris: fig. 2.9;
., lohn Wiley & Sons Limited: fig. 2.8; Julius
Shulman: cover, figs. 4-3, +5, 4.6; Keru:o Tange:
~, Kiyonori Kikutllke: figs. 12.2, 12.3; Marc
figs. 2.5, 2.6, Paul Rudolph: figs. 8.2, 8.3, 8.6,
8.8; Photo Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library,
Columbia University in the City of New York: figs. 8.1,
8+ 8,5; Photograph 2000 Museum of Modem Art,
New York: cover, fig. 9.8; Photo WD. Morgan:
fig. +" Rogier Hillier: figs. ,,6-3-9; Van den Braek
en Bakema Architceten: figs.
ll.6, ll.7'
Yukio Futllgawa:
Frank Uoyd
Wright Foundation,
fig. 8.7.

All righ.. reserved. No part of this hook may be repro

duced in any form by any electronic or mechanical

means (incl~ding photo~opying, recording, or infor,

mation storage and retrieval) without permission
in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Card Number: ()o"IlOI&j
Printed and bound in Canada

Legal Deposit:
Nation.l Library of Canada, 2000
Bibliotheque nabonale du Quebec, 2000

Every reasonable attempt has been made to identifY

""ner.; of copyrights. Errors or omissions will be
corrected in subsequent reprints.

Senior Editor: Lesley Johnstone

Production Manager: Oems Hunter

Translation: Barry Fifield, Neville Saulter

Editing: Edward Tingley, Marcia Rodriguez.,
Peter Smith
Reproduction Rights: Jocelyne Gervais
Index: Eva,Marie Neumann
Design: Glenn Goluska

Preface
Introduction: Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism
SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN AND REjEAN LEGAULT

II

Neorealism in Italian Architecture

MARISTELLA CASCIATO

25

An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism;

Ecochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-Afrique
MONIQUE ELEB

55

3 Freedom's Domiciles:
Three Projects by Alison and Peter Smithson
SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN

75

Contents

4- Richard Neutra and the Psychology of Architechnal Consumption

SANDY ISENSTADT
97

Cybernetic Theory and the Architecture of Performance:

Cedric Price's Fun Palace
MARY LOUISE LOBS INGER

119

6 Computer Architectures: Saarinen's Patterns, IBM'S Brains

REINHOLD MARTIN

14-1

7 The Monumentality of Rhetoric:

The Will to Rebuild in Postwar Berlin
FRANCESCA ROGIER

165

8 The Dangers of Eclecticism:

Paul Rudolph's Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley
TIMOTHY M. ROHAN

19 1

9 Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of Nomadism and Dwelling

FELICITY SCOTT

21 5

10

11

12

A Critique of Architecture:
The Bitter Victory of the Situationist International
JEAN-LOUIS VIOLEAU

239

Jaap Bakema and the

CORNELIS WAGENAAR

261

for Freedom

Putting Metabolism Back in Place: The Making of

a Radically Decontextualized Architecture in Japan
CHERIE WENDELKEN

279

Coda: Reconcephlalizing the Modem

SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN

301

Contributors
Index

325
328

MARY

lOUISE

LOBSINGER

Cybernetic Theory and the Architecture of Performance:

Cedric Price's Fun Palace

~~

We just haven't learned how to enjoy our new freedom: how to tum
machinery, robots, computers, and buildings themselves into instruments
of pleasure and enjoyment.
CEDRIC PRICE

The Modem Mcwement

Popular Culhwel
e-ydayLiIe
AnIi'ArchiIedu",
Democraiic Freedom
Homo

Luden.

Primitivism

Aulhenticily
Architecture's

History

Regionalism /Ploc.

To pry the subject free from the stifling repetitions of everyday

convention and to nurture an emergent individuality - these were
the aspirations that galvanized the Fun Palace Project. As archi
tecture, it would be purely utilitarian and purposeful: a mechanical
slab served as a provisional stage to be continuously set and reset,
sited and resited. What was expected to happen in the Palace was
as diagrammatically diffused as the contraption itself. It wouldn't be
the polite space of municipal geranium beds or fixed teak benches;
rather, it was conceived as a social experiment that would fuel both
conflict and cooperation. l
Sometime in 1960 Joan Littlewood met and became friends with
Cedric Price. Littlewood, a veteran of the English radical theater
scene, was on the brink of resignation after a nearly thirty-year fight
against establishment and commercial entertainments. Prior to the
Second World War she had been a member of the Theatre of Action,
a left-leaning theatrical company working out of Manchester that
favored Brechtian aesthetics and agit-prop street theater.l In 1945 she
co-founded the Theatre Workshop and during the 1950S had some
success in advancing the cause of experimental theater. At the time
of their meeting, Price was still a young architect on the London
scene. He was teaching at the Architectural Association, socializing
within a circle of young aspiring architects with a penchant for tech
nology, and was acquainted with architectural critic Reyner Banham. 4
The meeting would prove auspicious. Littlewood's desire for a new
kind of theatrical venue where her performances could flourish uncon
strained by built form became the inspiration for Price's architectur
al imagination. In tum, their project for a Fun Palace became the
vehicle through which the architect developed his idea for an anticipa
tory architecture capable of responding to users' needs and desires.
119

The Fun Palace was a proposal for an

infinitely flexible, multi-programmed, twenty
four-hour entertainment center that marries
communications technologies and industrial
building components to produce a machine
capable of adapting to the needs of users. A
grid of servicing towers supports open trusses
to which a system of gantries are appended
for maneuvering interchangeable parts (from
information monitors to pre-fab units) into
position (fig. 5.1). Circulation elements com
prise moving catwalks, escalators. or travela
tors (suspended, stair-like, and ground-level
systems). The conventional determination
of built form as an enclosure or legible enve
for functional requirements is supplant
ed by an idea of environmental control in
which, for example, adjustable sky-blinds
perform the role of roofing and the task of
spatial division is assigned to mutable barriers
described as movable screens, warm air
screens, optical barriers, and static vapor
zones. 5 Programmatic elements with specific
functional requirements such as kitchens
or workshops are housed in standardized
enclosed units sited on temporary, mechani
cally fitted deck-panels. 6 The structure is
serviced by a three-dimensional grid and
an uariable net of packaged conditioning
equipment" distributed across a gigantic
plinth housing a sewage purification plant
and other support systems. The ever-pragmat
ic Price proudly declared it a uself-washing
giant" capable of continually cleansing itself
with recycled river water, and suggested
that the site not be less than 20 acres.' This
description patently challenges the idea of
architecture as shelter, as enclosure, or as
a permanent signifier of social values. Here
the concept of architecture as conveyor of
symbolic expression has been forfeited for a
fully automated and, above all. transient
machine. Reyner Banham approvingly com
pared it to a "gigantic erector set."s
MARY LOUISE LOBSINGER

Price's ideas for a technologically inno

vative, 'non-deterministic' architecture
of planned obsolescence couched in terms
of Littlewood's conceptions for alternative
theatrical practice produced the quintes
sential anti-architectural project, the Fun
Palace. Littlewood's aesthetic was character
ized by an emphasis on direct commu
nication between audience and performer
and, importantly, on a communication that
stressed physical form over speech as the
means of expressing content. 9 The idea
that the form of theatrical experience should
be dynamic ran counter to the well-oiled
proscenium-framed productions of bourgeois
theater. Littlewood's work thrived on con
flict, employed interactive techniques, drew
on a variety of popular genres and media
from pantomime to music hall to film
and television, and adapted environmental
forms such as festivals with the aim of engag
ing the sensory and physical partiCipation
of the audience in the action. 10 In keeping
with her early communist roots, theater had
a pedagogical function. By the end of the
1950S, however, given rapidly changing
social and political imperatives. a burgeon
ing of mass media and consumer culture,
and the tum of the Left to an ideal of par
ticipatory democracy. the tactics of radical
theater required reassessment. Theater as
a forum for instruction was no longer an
effective instrument where the pressing con
cern was to awaken the compliant subjects
of an affluent consumer society. Welfare
State passivity had to be countered through
motivated, self-willed learning. Littlewood's
theatrical expertise and social mission were
well met by Price's wit and architectural
objective: to produce an architecture that
could accommodate change.
According to Littlewood, Price pro
duced the first sketch for the Fun Palace
in response to her complaints about the

5.1 Fun PoIace; perspedi.... lea River slle, 1961-65. Ced.-ic Price, archllec1 and drallsmon.
Photo reproduc1ion of 0 pholomontoge on mason lie. CCA Colledion

British taste for quaint old theaters. ll This

first drawing minimally articulates Price's
architectural intentions (fig. 502). The repre
sentation of the program is limited to a
few hand-scrawled notations: a long-distance
observation deck, large viewing screens, an
inflatable conference hall, and an area desig
nated for eating and drinking that is identi
cal to a space labeled "open exhibition."
A floating volume labeled "circular theater
part enclosed" is the most substantial clue
to programmatic content. By Littlewood's
account the drawing was inexplicable, more
diagram than suggestion for built-foIDI, the
identifiable objects being gantries, esca
lators, and various level markings within
a thin-lined filigree-like structure of towers
and trusses. 12 Of the more than four hundred
drawings consisting of time schedules,
movement diagrams, mechanical drawings,
details. and some perspectives (figs. 5.3 to
5.7), this initial conceptual sketch still accu
rately captures the essence of the scheme.
The perspective is more locational than
CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE

expressive of spatial qualities or formal

characteristics - but then there really isn't
much, in the way of architectonic qualities
or materiality, to describe in the Fun Palace.
As Price himself laconically noted, "It's a
kit of parts, not a building" - one that he
doubted would ever look the same twice. B
If the initiation of the project seems rather
fortuitous, the ensuing campaign of fund
raising and promotion, negotiations with
jurisdictional bodies such as the London
County Council, meetings with residential
associations, and the struggle to find a site
constituted a colossal undertaking that could
only have been impelled by a passionate
belief in the social necessity of realizing
the project. 14 Littlewood spearheaded the
effort with Price managing the architectural
aspects. In 196, she enlisted the help of
Dr. Gordon Pask, an expert on teaching
machines who Littlewood characterized as
the "romantic doyen of cybemeticians."15
111at same year Pask formed the Committee
for the Fun Palace Cybernetic Theatre,
121

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5.3 Fun Palace; diagrams for pilot projoct, 1961-65. Cedrie Price, on:hilecl. Pen-onc>;nk with IeIHip pen an vellum.
CCA Collection

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5.2 Fun Palace; interior perspective ,ketch showing mickec!ion, 1961-65. Cedric Prico, orchiled and drafbmon.
P."","",nk on trocing vellum, CCA Collection

which added a new twist to Littlewood's idea

of direct communication,l6 With the exper
tise of an unusual interdisciplinary commit
tee now in place, the goals of the project
were refocused: no longer merely the pro
vision of a barrier-free venue for experimen
tal theater, the technological mandate
moved beyond the realm of mechanical
mobility into the more ephemeral mobility
offered by new information media and mass
communications, The discrete disciplinary
interests of the three protagonists - cybernet
ics, transient architecture, participatory the
ater and communications merged in the
objectives of the Fun Palace project; to
facilitate the emergence of an ephemeral
subjectivity through the theatricality of com
munication, Thus began a working rela
tionship spanning more than a decade of
MARY LOUISE L08SINGER

activity,I7 The implicit consequence of the

project: an institutional critique of Welfare
State-administered culture.
Representing Architectural Reality: From
Image-Based Anti-Formalism 10 Technological
Ephemerality
Price's proposal for a technologically factual
system of assembly a mobile architecture
that eschewed architectural image
recommends itself to Banham's ideas about
the true vocation of architecture as pro
mulgated in Theory and Design in the First
Machine Age (1960). Banham's revisionist
history of the modern movement was cou
pled, in the book's last chapter, with a radical
prognostication for the future of architec
ture. In a polemic chastising architects of
the first machine age for their preoccupation

5.4 Fun Palaeo; interior per>pe<:li... showing ..apended mezzanines and slairways, 1961-65. Cedric Price, arehiled.
Pe!KInc>;nk on phologroph. CCA Collodion

CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE

123

with the representation of technology,

Banham challenged the architects of the
second machine age to run with technology.
The heroes of his tract were the Futurists
and Buckminster Fuller, between whom
Banham identified a shared inclination
toward pennanence and a resolution to
exploit science and technology. In somewhat
apocalyptic tenns, he declared architects
should emulate the Futurists, discard their
whole cultural load, and propose the con
tinual renovation of the built environment,
or architecture as a profession would not
survive the technological revolution. is
Fuller's 1927 proposal for the Dymaxion
House provided Banham with an object
lesson in which "a liberated attitude to both
mechanical services and materials tech
nology" organized the plan, and where "for
mal qualities were not remarkable, except
in combination with the structural and plan
ning methods involved."i9 The essence of
Banham's message was to drop illusionism
and the symbolic use of a machine aesthetic
and to accept the unhaltable progression
of constant accelerated change. 2o
Banham's promotion of an anti-formalist,
techn~logical approach to architecture is
central to understanding the context of
British postwar architecture and the rejec
tion of International Modernism. In brief,
. the critique may be framed in a threefold
way. The perception that International Mod
ernism was elitist and overly pre-occupied
with formal issues was met with a response
that emphasized a visual approach (the
picturesque) couched in terms of national
ism and traditional crafts. 11 These responses,
which included such movements as British
Townscape or the New Romanticism, were
in tum counter-critiqued by the British
avant-garde. One of the strongest reactions
to the revaluation of modernism in postwar
Britain was launched by the Independent
MARY LOUISE l08SlNGER

Group, which, in response to the insularity

of tradition-<lriented aesthetics, advocated
complete immersion in the visual excesses of
(mostly American) mass consumer cuture. 22
The London-based avant-garde of the mid
1950S cultivated an image-based aesthetic
with, in part, the intention of raising (or, as
some argue, lowering) visual communica
tion to a threshold in keeping with everyday
materiality and the experience of mass
media. In contrast to this, Price in the early
1960s advanced a third position, an alterna
tive to the dominant counter-critiques. For
Price, the new transient social configurations
emerging from mass culture were as tran
sient as the means of mass communication
themselves, and thus an architecture that
might adequately service and ultimately
encourage such social fonnations could not
rely on image or an ethos based in materiTo say that Price's work lacks strong
visual impact is an understatement, but
Price's idea of architectural communication
has little to do with a mimetic function,
that is, a natural correspondence with reality,
and is rather as pure and ephemeral as the
act of communicating itself. 23 In the mid
Price made the following observations
on the relation of architecture to the visual:
The role of architecture as provider of visually
recognizable symbols of identity, place, and
activity becomes an increasingly attractive excuse
for architects to revel in the immensity of their
personal visual dexterity, aesthetic sensibility, and
spatial awareness, demanding from both clients
and observers recognition of the very causations
of such

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In his 1963 review of the Team 10 Primer,

Price took the opportunity to inspect its
rhetoric and dissociated himself from con
temporary theories of urbanism and architec
ture. 2) With citations from texts by the

5.5 Fun Palace; skelch plans and inlerior perspective

1961-<>5. Cedric Priet>, an:hiled
Of1d drafts",on. Grop/lile with colored pencil on trocing YIIllum. CCA Collection

CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN FA LACE

125

Smithsons and others, he challenged Team

Ten's ideas of social collectivism, for exam
ple, on the gTOunds that in promoting forms
more valid in the past than the present, they
fail to address the needs of an emergent soci
ety in which transience and fluctuations in
population and group appetites will generate
new and often unpredictable urban forms.
For Price, "The needs of a new mobile
society and communication systems which
serve it invalidate existing town planning
techniques of fixed building hierarchies and
anonymous space.',2(l The Primer, he notes,
surely identifies the pertinent issues of the
times, but Price was not convinced of Team
Ten's commitment, due in part to their
logic. The crux of his doubt centered on
the ambiguous use of texts and images. For
example, the work's authors rightly
to the phenomenon of mobility as a con
tributing factor in the development of urban
ism and yet, Price asked, is mobility worth
investing with architectonic importance
simply because it is there?27 Price wondered
whether we were not simply being confront
ed, once again, by the aesthetic of the early
modernists, which visualized mechaniza
tion (real or imagined) rather than utilizing
new technologies?28 Taking existing form
as evidence for their critique, Team Ten's
. reliance on "the found" as reality neglected
the complex ways in which cities really
worked "in spite of their physicallimil5."29
For Price, both the group's criticism and its
theory of production failed to offer, in his
words, "a well-serviced mobility.,,3o These
last points - mobility and an insistence that
is not necessarily visibly evident
are issues he has adhered to ever since and

continues to develop to this day.

Although the Fun Palace was never real

ized, Price achieved such notoriety with
this and other projects such as the Potteries
Thinkbelt as to secure for himself a seminal
MARY LOUISE LOBSINGER

role within debates about architecture and

technology.31 For cutting-edge technological
visionaries such as Archigram, Price was
the man to watch, but for those who thought
architecture had a visually communicative
role inextricably bound to optical appropria
tion, his work was anathema to everything
architecture might stand for. 32 But for Price,
to ask what meaning might look like was
to pursue the WTOng line of inquiry; when
confronted with new technologies (both
mechanical and cybernetic) and new modes
of scientific analysis (such as systems design
theory), conventional notions of architec
ture were rendered moot. 33 Price believed
no premium could be placed on what
be considered meaningful experience, or
how it might be achieved or represented in
advance of use. In fact, architecl5 were not
in the business of providing meaning at
all; according to Price, their task was to solve
problems and extend the possibilities of
choice and delight. l4 Collective meaning,
if the word can be used in this context, was
to be deciphered from within a dynamically
interactive field of communication. To this
end, Price aimed to provide an environment
that would both anticipate and accommo
date change." It was envisioned as a giant
leaming machine with the capacity to
enable humans to physically and mentally
adapt to the intangible experiences and
accelerated pace of technological culture. 16
In one of his earliest musings on the project
Price stated:

.....

5.6 Fun Paloce; diaglllmmolic sec1ion, 1961-65. Cedric Price, architoct. Pen and black ink, grophik!, ond dry trcns!er
on lTacing \'&Ilum. CCA Collec1ion

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Is it not possible that with a little imagination

we can ourselves lind a new way of learning, new

things to Jearn, and enjoy our life, the space,
the light, the knowledge, and the inventiveness
we have in ourselves in a new way?l7

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5.7 Fun Pala<:e; dioSlllmmotic plan, 1961-65. Cedric Price, orchilect. Graphite, colored pencil, perKlnd-ink, and balJ.poinl
pen on mylar. CCA Collec1ion

CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE

127

critique of the Welfare State: An:hiIecture

and Technologicaly Enhanced Perfurmativity

In a statement typifying Pricean ambiguity,

Price claimed that a structure should stand
only as long as it was socially useful. To
ensure the temporality of the Fun Palace,
Price assigned a ten-year life to its structural
frame 38 But temporality was not simply
a matter of planned obsolescence, or the
interchangeability and disposability of
various building components; rather, time
was intended to playa dynamic role in
human perception - dynamic in the cyber
netic sense of real_time. 39
The production of the social and the indi
vidual- both physically and virtually - in
real-time is the theoretical crux of the Fun
Palace. Reiterated in the Fun Palace briefs
is a soft leftist critique arguing that the disci
plinary regime of time is dictated by a mar
ket-place that artificially divides a worker's
life into work-time and leisure-time, a regi
mentation of time that is materially enforced
through the zoning of work and leisure in
urban space.40 For Price, this archaic sense
of time ran counter to the emerging real
time of cybernetics and its network of invis
ible services. The conflict between the
simultaneous time of information and the
disciplinary time of work (of schedules, time
tables, industrial production) had to be
amended for humans, to allow them to adapt
to the flux and flow of the future technolog
ical world. In the article "Non-Plan: An
Experiment in Freedom" of 19~, Banham,
Barker, Price, and Hall almost paraphrase
an earlier statement by one of the founders
of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, when they
claim that the cybernetic revolution must
be accompanied by a revolution in human
thought and required a new mental and
physical mobility.-!l Fun Palace as a diagram
matic architecture of probability in present
time would act as a temporary measure to
MARY lOUISE LOeSINGER

ease the transition into the real-time of the

information age.
In a conventional sense, the Fun Palace
as architecture had no intrinsic meaning
as a machine; it was merely an abstract
machine that when activated by the users
was capable of producing and processing
inforrnation!Z In this way it may be consid
ered performative, for only at the moment
of transaction between user and machine
would meaning or content be expressed,
and at that moment would expression be
identical with the act of perfonning. Further
more, in the act of performing, the
and spatiality of the architecture would be
annulled for the ephemerality of pure, ume
,
communication. For at the most
literal level, activities such as the maneuver
ing of building components or the group
determination of a program involves a basic
form of social interaction. It was also imag
ined that the Fun Palace would be equipped
with the latest in communications technol
ogy: reading machines, televisions, and
computers.4 ' These scientific gadgets held
the promise of thrusting the participant
beyond mundane reality and into a virtual
realm of communication.
The earliest stated objectives fur the
Fun Palace were "to arrange as many forms
of fun as possible in one spot, to make
moving in all directions, on feet or wheel,
a delight, to provide conditions which make
everyone part of the total activity and to
exploit drinking, necking, looking, listening,
shouting, and resting ... in the hopes of an
emption or explosion of unimagined social
ity through pleasure:+! At first glance this
agenda seems typical of calls during the
IoS for theatrical self-expression as a route
to personal liberation. But Price was quick
to say that what he had in mind was not
"a mecca for conventional free-will activIn the early documents, presumably

written to convince legislative boards, the

rhetoric of pleasure is accompanied by argu
ments for amendments to land-use
and for the elimination of redundant pro
gramming brought about by borough-to
borough competition for new leisure and
cultural facilities. 46 In later briefs the cultural
mission becomes more pointed: the Fun
Palace was a leaming machine that enabled
self-participatory education through the
interface between man and machine,
between human beings, and, in keeping
with the cybernetic theory it suggests,
between smart machines:7 According to
Price, the Fun Palace would be "a short
term life toy of dimensions and organization
not limited by or to a particular site, which
is one good way of trying, in physical terms,
to catch up with the mental dexterity and
mobility exercised by all today.- As a short
term exploratory toy, it would require the
"coordination and cooperation in i1:5 day to
day operations oflocal authorities, the State,
industry, private organizations and individ
uals."49 And in i1:5 various designations
as toy, university of the stree1:5, or laboratory
of pleasure it was not merely another con
tainer of amenities for Welfare State enter
tainment. In As Littlewood and Price stated
in 1962:
The present socia-political talk of increased
leisure makes both a slovenly and dangerous
assumption that people on one hand are suffi
ciently numb and servile to accept that the
period during which they eam money can be
little more than made mentally hygienically
bearable and that a mentality is awaken [sic]
during self-willed activityH

This reiterated a commonly voiced criticism

of British social conditions. In 1960 Malcolm
Muggeridge described the routinized and
self-satisfied Welfare State in vivid language:
CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PAlACE

The new towns rise, as do the television aerials,

dreaming spires; the streams flow, pellucid,
through comprehensive school; the BBC lifts
up our heam in the morning, and bids us good
night in the evening. We wait for Godot, we
shall have strip-tease wherever we go.... 52

Muggeridge captures the sense of social

complacency that attended the success
of Welfare State cultural and educational
policies and the economic prosperity of the
19505. The leveling of social experience
not to be mistaken for a leveling of the class
structure - and the anaesthetization of soci
ety was perceived by some intellectuals as
a situation nearing crisis. Two responses to
this cultural uncertainty, Richard Hoggart's
The Uses ofLiteracy (1957) and Raymond
Williams's Britain in the Sixties: Communi.
cations (I~) attempted to analyze the crisis
in view of the proliferation of mass-media
communications. Written in a nostalgic
vein, The Uses ofLiteracy reads as a lament
for the loss of an identifiable working class
and for the erosion of indigenous forms
of popular culture. 13 Hoggart targeted the
pulp-print culture of tabloids, dailies, and
romances as the cause of both the trivializa
tion oflife and the individual's distancing
from concrete social reality. He argued
that despite the rise in literacy, the profusion
of iunk culture had become debilitating,
especially for the most vulnerable group,
the working class, which easily succumbed
to its appeals to conformity. Distinctive class
characteristics - communal bonds, local
wisdom and ethics, and, importantly, tradi
tions in speech, ~the guying of authority
by putting a finger to the nose" - disap
peared in the programming of homogenous
appetites. \4 Hoggart's problem with mass
publications was not that they debased taste
but that they over-excited it, eventually
dulled it, and would finally kill it - "they
129

enervate rather than corrupt" -leaving

numb and passive subjects.;5 The problem
was political: who controlled the prolifera
tion of mass media; who formed and whetted
the appetite for it?
In his analysis of mass-communica
lions technology in British culture, Raymond
Williams did not worry about the loss of
cultural distinctions but feared for the evolu
tion of an educated and participating democ
racy. 56 Williams claimed that Britain had
been quick off the mark to employ new
media technologies for cultural and educa
tional purposes in the belief that via the
ailwaves, a classless and egalitarian society
composed of literate and rational subjects
would emerge. However, by the late 19505 it
was clear that the ideal of the ailWaves as a
space of freedom outside the market was no
longer tenable. Between the paternalistic
educational policies adopted by BBe culture
guardians and the imperatives of the com
mercial market there seemed to be little
room for the kind of communication that
Williams thought essential for the growth of
a truly democratic society.5i Williams argued
that democracy depended on free, sponta
neous communication and, significantly,
that it had no predetermined form, for
"when put into practice could it be felt to be
real."58 He called for a rethinking of British
cultural institutions and proposed the forma
tion of new kinds of bodies, such as Commu
nications Centers for research and analysis.
However, more urgent was the need for a
where ordinary people could exercise
choice and effectively exert control within an
uncensored network of communications. 59

MARY lOUISE lOBSINGER

Control and Communication: From

Participatory Architecture 10 a Cybernetic

- 3

Learning Machine

If programmatic components such as an

automated information library, a news room,
auditoria. rallying spaces, and committee,
therapy, and research rooms seem rather
unusual for an entertainment center, and
if some of the assertions about the Fun
Palace seem naively optimistic ("the Fun
Palace is both a pleasure arcade and an
instrument which motivates the
passive participant into thinking more
abstractly," or "scientific gadgets, new sys
tems, knowledge locked away in research
stations can be brought to the street corner"),
what is one to make of Littlewood's state
ment that "the 'fun arcade' will be full of
games and tests that psychologists and elec
tronic engineers now devise for the service
of war - knowledge will be piped
juke-boxes"?60 To understand this we must
examine the contribution of the Fun Palace
Cybernetics Committee, specifically that
of Dr. Gordon Pasko
Pask's "Theatre Workshop and Systems
Research: Proposals for a Cybernetic
Theatre" offers some insight into the degree
of his commitment to the project. After a few
introductory remarks - such as, "the crux of
a Cybernetics Theatre is that an audience
should genuinely participate in a play" and
that it should overcome "the restrictions in
entertainment media such as cinema and
television" - Pask proceeds to outline, in
rather opaque technical jargon, a cybernetic
analysis of the problem (fig. 5.8).61 He then
provides some of the most initially baffling
but fascinating diagrams of the entire pro
ject. It seems that in Pask's theater the seats
would be equipped with controls allowing
the audience to intervene in the action
of the play.62 A computing machine located
backstage would calculate audience input

.A
To the J:liddle
Procadure

:from the middle

procedure
/

Upper Level Prooedure

1
\l
\

'" To uppor
leval

r:

1'"'_

TheF
m
Preforence
Valuation
Assertion

Fm
next
J,ptivity
scluotion

t F~Zj

~I

in sot

!mLb..
Lower Luvol Procodure - givon individual
8Jld.?\. (n)

= r i (n}Zj(n)

chOOSing

rj,

DLiGRAi1 1.
5.B Fun Palace; diagram lor a cybemelics theater from minule' of the Cybernefic> Commiliee, 27Jonuory 1965.
Cedric Price and Gordon Pa.k. Pitolocapy en wove poper. CCA Collection

CEORIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE

131

and relay the results to actors on stage.

If the hardware proposed seems awkward
and amusing by comparison with current
developments in electronic communication,
the terms both Pask and Littlewood use
remind us of where communication technol
ogy was developed and the kinds of assump
tions
made about human
interaction.6>
In this context a brief description of cyber
netics is in order. Cybernetics arose
the Second World War in connection

responses of pilots
in combat. A
control system that accurately analyzed mes
sages between two combatants was of interest
as a means of controlling the outcome of
battles. Postwar research on information
feedback systems focused on a less antago
nistic but equally competitive model of
human interaction. In keeping with the
classic definition of cybernetics as the study
of "control and communication in animals
and machines," research concentrated on
how systems organize themselves - that is,
how they reduce uncertainty and achieve
stability by adapting, cooperating, and com
peting or basically how systems learn to
survive. 64 One of the basic axioms of cyber
netics has it that messages contain informa
tion accessible to the communicator but nat
to the recipientD' - humans are like black
boxes, receiving input and
out
put but having no access to our awn or any
one else's inner life. 66 In cybernetics, it
was irrelevant whether a signal or message
had gone through a machine or a person;
the priority was to facilitate pure communi
cation wherever and however it occurred.
Systems analysis and computational
machines were imagined to be SOCially
beneficial, for they fucilitated the transmisMARY lOUISE lOSSINGER

sian of information. According to Norbert

Wiener, "information is the content of
what is exchanged with the outer world as
we adjust to it and make our adjusbnent
felt upon it."67 To adapt, to live more effec
tively within the complexity of modem
life, it was necessary to have adequate infor
mation feedback. 611
To fucilitate learning and help people
live in a scientific culture, the Fun Palace
would be eQuipped with
calcu
as cooperative
by twa or three people
or m<1lVlllual teaching machines) with
the idea that these would assist people to
learn cooperative behavior and develop
speed in observation and deduction. 69
There would be c1osed-circuit TVS and sur
veillance systems by which participants
could "experience the emotional thrill and
power" of watching themselves participate 70
It seems clear that the initial ambitions
for the Fun Palace have shifted focus, from
an alternative theater venue to a cybernet
ic learning machine.
This escalation of the goals of the
Fun Palace did not pass unnoticed through
Committee meetings. At the meeting on
27 January lS a meandering exchange
about the character of fun is fallowed by
reaffiml3tion of the ambition to "merge
education with the field of entertainment,"
only to provoke a challenge from one mem
ber who objected to the overemphasis on
simple-minded mechanization: "People are
too intelligent to be duped by an automaton
for long," and such thinking had made the
Fun Palace "redolent of a Scientist's toy
and nat necessarily something intelligent
human beings would enjoy."" The Commit
tee struggled to define the project: was it
a fun fair or a night school? Were they trying
to tum out obedient participant citizens or
provide an unusual amenities facility?

In a letter to Gordon Pask in 1964,

Littlewood grappled with the use of "sensory
apparatus to receive infonnation about
participants."n She argues that "it is right
in a project of this kind to advance beyond
the bounds of respectability and to move
into the hinterland of things ... far we then
will know a great deal about how to control
people and how to make them
Man, she claims, is mast at home in sur
roundings that, like the processes going on
in his mind, are continually developing and
evolving. Evidently surprised at the territory
she has entered, Littlewood submits that
"oddly enough, the whole bases of this enter
prise is [sic 1the recognition that man is not
an automaton.7+ She had wandered into
strange territory indeed. Littlewood was
concocting a project about which she could
innocently say that,

becomes a floating control replacing the

disciplinary time scales of closed systems.,,76
The archaic space and time of work and
leisure is dissolving into a continuous aggra
vated pressure-control where seminars at
work, continuing education, and upgrading
exams in business or even the most "ludi
crous game shows" are presented as
means far motivating humans to learn and
to produce.77 This, for Deleuze, is a mare
nefarious kind of control - invisible, appar
constraining at the same
time. In this context, the words that accom
pany the promotion of the Fun Palace
healthy competition to motivate self-willed
learning through the stimulation of appetites,
self-regulation to achieve group consensus
override the light-hearted pleasure-seeking
sense of the project, which in itself might
be thought of as a farm of control. 78

The operators in the social system are like

mirth and sensuality. Its operators are actions
or intentions or changes in the shade of joy
or grief. We can to some extent control these
transformations, though, in this case, we and
our machinery act as catalysts and most of the
computation is done as a result of the interac
tion taking place between membelli of the
population, either by verbal discourses, or by
competitive utilization of facilities, or by
cooperation to achieve a common objective. 75

Contribution and Conclusion

At this juncture it is clear that the Fun
Palace project was a free-wheeling explo
ration arising from a cross-disciplinary
committee that entertained extreme notions
of what a building might be and how or
why it was necessary to 'educate' the ITI3sses
for a new technological culture. The cross
based, as was
the Fun Palace itself, on ideas borrowed
from systems-design theory, especially that
of self-organizing systems - ITI3y be its most
significant contribution to recent architec
rural history and theory.79In the early stage
of Price's career, the architect was not expli
cit about his use of systems-design theory
but it is clear that this first adventure offered
him a willing client and the right circum
stances for putting an experimental design
and method into play. 80 This interdiscipli
nary process, where Price's contribution is
limited to architectural expertise, can be
understood as a means of circumventing the

The suggestion here of behavior-modification

techniques gives way further on to
tions of the program in the cozying terms
of festival days, pranks, children's nurseries,
and the experience of pleasure.
Within this discussion, it is not fur-fetched
to mention the work of Gilles Deleuze
on emergent forms of social control. In Post
script on Control Societies, Deleuze argues
that "control societies are taking over from
disciplinary societies," and here" control
CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE

133

finality of architectural fonn as a represen

tation of pennanent social values and also
as a non-authorilarian gesture wherein
unique authorship is overruled by the organi
zational system. The project, conceived as
a diagram of possibilities, seemingly allayed
the problem of overdetennination in plan
ning, since as a
system ready at
all times to be put into action, it refused
traditional notions of the architectural disci
plining of space and time.
At the mention of control systems and the
lax behaviorist psychologizing to
happiness, one is inclined to recoil in
amused disdain. But this would misinterpret
and misrepresent the contribution of the pro
ject. Certainl)" by the end of the 19605 an
anti-technology bacldash was felt in both pop
ular culture and architecture. For example,
Alvin TofRer's Future Shock (1970) saw tech
nology as "spinning out of control" and
argued that the accelerated rate of change
manifest in all facets of life was pushing
social processes to the brink of socio-psycho
logical shock. SI Future Shock is not the most
sober assessment available of the state of
society and technology, but its hyperbolic
gloss is significant in that it captured popular
sentiment and signaled a retreat from the
optirnism that had welcomed the "dawn of
the second machine age."fll By 1970 the very
'techniques which were to sponsor human
liberation, to facilitate the emergence of a
participatory democracy, to de-institutional
ize education and put scientific knowledge
in the hands of the masses were viewed as
instruments of social control. The hoped-for
transformation to new social configurations
within mass communication and the cyber
netic dream of an evolved human perceptual
awareness through human-machine inter
face had succumbed to disillusionment.
TofHer himself cites Price's Fun Palace
as an instance of technocratic thought and
MARY lOUISE lOBSINGER

the impoverishment of the most significant

part of human experience, the built envi
ronment. S) Ayear earlier Price's Potteries
Thinkbelt project had faced criticism from
within architecture when George Baird
argued that the apparently neutral, hands
off design strategy was nothing less than a
thinly veiled attempt to restructure the codes
of architectural language. Baird stated that
Price's refusal to provide "visually recogniz
able symbols of identity, place, and activity"
and his reduction of architecture to a
machine for "life-conditioning" displayed
a gross misconception of architecture's
place in human experience.84 For Baird,
Price's architecture-as-servicing mechanism
was equivalent to architecture as "a coffee
vending machine."s5
Beyond these humanist critiques there
are aspects of the Fun Palace that are pre
scient of issues surrounding the use of infor
mation technologies and analytical processes
associated with computational thought that
have been taken up in some current critical
architectural practices. Despite the fact that
systems-design theory, as a non-hierarchial,
more democratic process of problem-solving
and producing architecture, has been shown
to be patently false, the updating of its theo
retical premises and the recent interest in its
means of analysis (particularly dia
gramming) has made a positive contribution
to architectural theory. Many of these prac
tices share with Price a concern about the
design process - that is, the desire for a gen
erative aesthetic process as a means of usurp
ing fomlalist predilections, as a means to
fully engage the potential of new technoltr
(such as computer software), and as a
kind of radical utilitarianism. In the 1960s,
as today, the Fun Palace offers architects a
challenging conception of architecture that
privileges organization and idea over archi
tecture as built form.

Briefly returning to the ideas that gal

vanized the Fun Palace, of the conceptual
contrarieties that pose problems for the
claims underlying the project, the most
obvious is the idea that an architecture that
accommodates change, the very mode of
consumption itself, might possibly be effec
tive in awakening the compliant subjects of
the paternalistic Welfare State. This counter
intuitive idea suggests that Price held out
for a value-free notion of capitalist entrepre
neurialism against the bureaucracy of the
state. Within this ideological frame, spon
taneity and consumption are not obverse
sides of the coin. Despite the fact that this
optimistic vision of individual, active par
ticipation within free enterprise implies
that enabled participants might somehow
take hold of the market, one is compelled
to ask at what point spontaneity and choice
passes over into pure consumption?86 As
perceptive critics have already pointed out,
within late capitalism the distance between
choice and control on the one hand and
market deternlination on the other is
uncomfortably narrow.

1 Cedric Price. "A Me"",!!:e m Londoners: draft lOr a

promotional brochure for the Fun Palace, Canadian

Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Cedric Price

Archive Ihereinafter Price Archive].

2 Document dated 18.2./4, Price Archive.

DlU99S:0l88:,.6.

3 On Littlewood', contribution In British radical

theater. see Howard Goomey, The Theatn Work

,/wp Storr (London: Eyre Methuen, .<)8.) or Joan

Littlewood, Joan Littlewood', Peculiar History as

She Tells It (London: Methuen, '994). On her near

retirement in ..)61, see Coomey, "Coodbye note

from Joan," 185. News clipping from The Observer

('0 July 1966), 9. Price Archive, box <;/5, Mareh

1965-September 11)66. "rve spent thirty years in the

theatre, and I never want m .ee it again. If, dead,

all that i. over; people have got to be able to come

and go, look at this or at that, have three rings

to cboose from or if. all compulsion. ThaI's why

I want the Fun Palace: Goome)" 11. Manifesto

of the Theatre of Action: "The commercial Theatre

of Ar:tion i. limited by its dependence upon a

,mall section of society which neither desires, nor

dares m face the urgent and vital problems of today.

The theatre, if it is to live, must of necessity rellect

the spirit of the age. This spirit is founded on social

conflicts which dominate world history today-

the raOO of ;,000,000 unemployed, starving for

bread while wheat is bumed for fuel.. .. This theatre

will perform, mainly in working.elass districts,

plays which express life and struggle. of the worken.

Politics in its fullest sense, means the affairs of

the people ...:

4 In conversation with Cedric Price, November ,<)96.

Conversation with Roy Landau. 2 March '999.

5 Price Archive. box tl5

6 'Fun Palace Project Report: March 1965. Price

Archive, box 5.
7 Cedric Price, "Fun Palace for Camden Town:

Architectural Design 37:11 (November 1967),52>..

On the scale of the development. see "Fun Palace

Project Report; 5, 9, where he refen m the first Mill

Meads site along the River Lea. lAter estimations

for siting pilot projects limit the area to 2.5 acres.

It is quite ..mni,hing to imagine a lO-Ilcre mechani

cal plinth. At the time ecology WlI.S not the issue it

would become by the early 19705.

8 Reyner Banham. "A Clip on Architecture." Design

Quarterl)' 63 (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center,

1965),13

9 Goomer,a.

10 Baz Kershaw, The Politics ofPer(ornu;.nce: Radical

Theatre as Culturallnte1Wlltion (New York:

Routledge. 1991), 103.

11
II

CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE

Littlewood, 701.
Littlewood, 7""

13S

13 Littlewood, 70'.
14 On 1& May 1<]63 Price applied to the London
County Council (Lee) to use'land along the River
Lea. Mayor Lou Sherman approached the Civic
Trust with a request lOr a feasibility study. They
found support with Leslie Lane, director of the
Civic Trust, and located a site in Mill Meads. How
ever. when the Lee became the Creater London
Council in Apri1196.f and the authority changed
hands. both the site and the political support were
lost. The site was designated for sewage disposal.
"I roamed fin and wide, a land-hungry settler; tried
Glasgow. Edinburgh, Liverpool. while the designs
went round the world. I lectured in Helsinki,
Aarhus, the Unive"ities of London. There and at
the London School of Economics we found our
most helpful supporters: Littlewood, 713.
'5 Litllewood,637. Pask worked for Research Systems
Ltd.. frequented the Architectu11l1 A'ISOCiation in the
.<}60s, and published in Archigram, Archirectural
Design, New Scientist, and other journals. Pask was
also an acquaintance of Price.
16 The Cybernetics Committee consisted of R. Ascott,
Ipswich School of Art; C. Beatty, Research Institute;
S. Beer, Sigma; A Briggs, Sussex Univenity;
R. Chestennan, Goldsmith's College; R Coodman,
Bristol University; R. Gregory, Cambridge UniverM. Young, Institute of Community Studies.
Littlewood,
17 The years between
and 1966 were the most
active. On.6 June 1<]65 the Fun Palace Charitable
Trust was established to deal with organizational
matters, Among the trustees were Buckminster
Fuller and Yehudi Menuhin. Documents show
that the Trust continued to meet well into the .9IIos.
The most recent engineering memo is dated .')85
inrormation for a high platform pivot
mecllanlsm. Frank Newby, a constant collaborator
with Price, was the structural engineer in the early

the Scholar to Return ro Hi. Studi.. (London:

Fefrer and Simons, 1.).
20 Banham. Theory and Daign, 327-30.
21 The fiftieth-annivenary issue ofTh. Architectural
Review provides some interesting insights into the
visual approach. The editorial claimed that one of
il> aims over the previous fifty yea.. had been visual
r<-education. See "The Second Half Centurv:
TIu! Architectural Review (Jam",!]' '947) 8. '
J:.l See Anne Massey, The Independent Croup,
Modernism and MtlSII Culture in Britain, '945-'959
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)
and David Robbins. ed., TIu! Independent Group:
Posn..ur Britain and tire Aesthetics of Plent),
(Cambridge, Mo.",.: The MJT Press, '990).
'3 Peter Murray, "Introduction." Cedric Price Supple
ment,Archirecturo[ Design 40 ('970), 50.7. On Price
as a conceptual architect. s"" Colin Rowe. "On
Conceptual Architecture: A:rtnet (October 1975),

&-<J.
'4 Cedric Price, "Lif...conditioning," A:rchitectural

Design 36:10 (October .<]66), 483

15 The social ideals, notions of critical urhan practices,

.6
l7

years. Price J\:rchive.

,8 Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in tire First

Machine Age (1<}60; Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT
Press, 1')891, 329-30.
'9 Sanham, Theory and Design, '. Note that Price
was also a great admirer of Fuller and had been
introduced to him by Banham in the late 19505.
Price wrote Fuller's obituary for The Architectural
Review, in the cour.. of which he identified some
of the concepts that align his thought with Fuller's,
such as the idea of refom.ng the environment and
not men and the notion of anticipatory design as
the only design. See "Buckminster Fuller: 1~51')83: TIu! A:rchitectural Review .038 (August .')83),4
In this context it is worth mentioning that Fuller was
interested in alternative education and educational
rerorm. See Fuller. Education Automation: Freeing

MARY LOUISE LOBSINGER

z8

29

30

and non-permanent architecture of Price have

some affinities with Constant's New Babylon. The
British Situationist Ale, Trocchi was in contact
with Price and there are affinities also between Price
and the Situationists. The Sin City Project (1<]62-63)
by Michael Webb of Archigram also shares some
programmatic and architectural concerns .Iith the
Fun !':alace. However, Price's use of a SYStems
approach and his dedication to technoiogy distin
guish his work from all three,
Cedric Price, "Reflections on the Team X Primer:
Architectural Design 32:5 (May 13). ;zo8.
Price, "Reflections on the Team X Primer;;z08.
"If in the mid-60's it matters little to a man whether
he lives and works in Manchester or Southampton,
the architectural problem is not to r<-establish urban
identities. hut to enrich this new-scale localional
freedom. It is essential that architects. in determin
ing and providing the scale of perceptual living,
match or extend the multi-directional activities and
appetites of present.(lay man.'
Note that Alan Colquhoun published "Symbolic
and Literal Aspects of Technology" in Architectural
Design 32'11 (November ,<]6,), 5~. Both
Colquhoun's criticism ofthe symbolic use of tech
nology and Banham's critique of the symbolic use
of machine image I)' were probably influential.
Price. "Reflections on the Team X Primer." .wS.
In a later article on the Potteries Thinkbelt. a project
premised on ideas developed in the Fun Palace,
Price stated, "I doubt the relevance of the concepts
ofTown Centre, Town and Balanced Community.
Calculated suburban sprawl sounds good to me:

See Cedric Price, "The Potteries Thinkbelt;

40 For a concise description of the shift from discipli
nary regimes to control societies, see Gilles Deleuz.e,
Archirectuml Design 36:", (October '966), 483.
"Postcript on Control Societies: Negotiation..
3' See Peter Buchanan, "High-Tech: Another British
Thoroughbred: The Architecturnl Review 1037
'97~"!9o, trans. Martin loughin (Ne'" York;
(July 1')83), '5-'9. Buchanan cites the Plateau Beau
Columbia Univenity Press, 1995), In-B2.
4' Reyner Banbam, Paul Barker, Peter Hall, and
bourg as the direct descendent of the Fun Palace.
Cedric Price. "Non-Plan: An Ei<periment in
Also see H. Muschamp. who views the Fun Palace
as the descendant of the 1851 Crystal Palace, "Fun:
Freedom; New Society 338 (w March 1<]69), "",".
See Norbert Wiener, Cybernetic. or Control and
Ottr>gano 99 (June '991), 5-Lf.
32 Archigram, "Cedric Price: Activity and Change:
Communication in tlu! Animal and tlu! Machine
Archigram. (1,), n.p. When interviewed in
(Cambridge. Ma.u., The MIT Press. 1948), 39. Later,
Price reiterates his idea of nonillan: "Non-plan and
November 19<]6. Price did not reciprocate the
the advantages of unevenness, proposes to reduce
admiration ""'Pressed by Archigram. He considered
the permanence of the assumed worth of the past
their work overly preoccupied with style and
uses of space through avoiding their reinforcement,
ics and a slightly disappointing contribution.
society might he given not only the opportunity
considered the Smithson's House of the Future,
to re-assess such worth but also be able to establish
indebted to Fuller's Dymaxion Bathroom of '937,
a new order of priorities ofland, sea, and air which
a noteworthy contribution to the genre ofadaptable
architecture and to an anti-aestbetic, but he was
would be related more directly to the valid social
and economic life span of sucb uses, replace Utopia
critical of their rhetoric.
with non-plan: Cedric Price, "Approaching an
33 For. commentary on Price's method, see Cedric
Price, Price's Process, Cedric Price and Visual
Architecture of Approximation: Archirectural
Literacy; RDyalln.rtitute of British Architects 83"
D..ign <p:lO ('97'), 6.f6.
<p This interpretation is indebted to the work ofGilles
(January 1976), .6--'7; Steve Mullin, Cedric Price;
Deleuze
and Flilix Guattari, A Thousand Platea... ,
Architectural Design ~:5 (May 1976), .8.-87' and
Copita/ill11l and Schizophrenia. trans. Brian Massu
Reyner Banham, "Cycles of the Price-Mechanism:
mi (Minneapolis: Minnesota Unive..ity Press, 1<jJ7),
AA Files 8 (January '985), '03-00.
34 Price, "Price's Process; 17. Price maintains that
6S-ql, 140-44
the architect's role is to solve problems and develop
43 Norbert Wiener, TIu! Human Use of Human Beings:
ideas and possibilities rather than speCific design
Cybernetict and Sodel)' (New York: Avon Boob,
solutions.
'950),133. Robert Bruegman, "The Pencil and the
Electronic Sketchboarti, Architecture and Repre
35 See The Architecrural Review 1038 (iIllgust '983), 4
sentation and the Computer," in Architecture

36 Roy Landau, "An Architecture of Enabling, The

and Its IIIl<Ig" ed. Eve Blau and Edward Kaufman

Work of Cedric Price: AA Files 8 (january 1985).

3-7. Landau convincingly argues that Price's
(Cambridge, Mass" and Montreal: The"IT Press

and Canadian Centre for Architecture, '989), '4".

position is devoted to enabling the individual and

44 Unpaginated document (Anti-architect document),
is essentially a deeply ethical and rational point
of view_
Price Archive.
45 "The Approach to Planning: Price Archive.
37 Price A:rchive, box 1/5.
38 Cedric Price, "Fun Palace Project: The Architectur
46 Price Archive. The main problem faced by the
Committee was to find. site. This is somewhat
al Review 815 (Janual)' 1<]65), 74. He estimated that
it would take 18 months to 2 Years to build. Note
paradoxical given that the project is premised
Price was and is staunchly a~ti-preservationist. This
on a lack of site specincity.
is ironic. as today the preservationists are attempting
47 Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price, "A Laboratory
to have his Inter-Action Centre (197'-77) designated
of Fun: Ne.. Scientist 38 (14 May 1<J64), 433. In
as historically valuable.
the late 'OS Price'gtlest..dited an issue of Architec
tural D..ign on Learning. He claimed that "Learn
39 In articles from the later .OS Price refe.. to cyber
netics and information theory but never so as to
ing will soon become the major industry of every
directly substantiate his work; he also does not use
developing counlly, and those countries with estab
the term real-time.' See Cedric Price, "The indus
lished educational systems will have to restructure
most drastically their existing facilities." "Learning;
trial Designer: Architectural Design 39:> <February
Archirectural Design 38 (May '968), ,08. See Cedric
1<]69), 6.-6. Here he refers to time as the fourth
Price, "National School Plan," Architectural Design
dimension in the design aesthetic. This is a vital
and continuing point of departure ror Price, as
39 (March ,<]69), '54-55'
evidenced by his recent exhibition at the Canadian
48 "Fun !':alace: Being an account of the necessity
Centre for Architecture, Cedric Price; Mean Time.
of the Fun Palace as a temporary 'valve' in a late

CEDRIC PRICE'S fUN PALACE

137