Cedric Price

Cedric Price FRIBA (11 September 1934 – 10 August 2003) was an English architect and influential teacher and writer on architecture.

The son of an architect (A.G. Price, who worked with Harry Weedon),^[1] Price was born in Stone, Staffordshire, and studied architecture at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1955, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where he encountered and was influenced by the modernist architect and urban planner Arthur Korn.^[2] From 1958 to 1964 he taught part-time at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and at the Council of Industrial Design. He later founded Polyark, an architectural schools network.

After graduating, Price worked briefly for Erno Goldfinger, Denys Lasdun, the partnership of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, and applied unsuccessfully for a post at London County Council, working briefly as a professional illustrator before starting his own practice in 1960.^[1] He worked with The Earl of Snowdon and Frank Newby on the design of the Snowdon Aviary at London Zoo (1961).^[3] He later also worked with Buckminster Fuller on the Claverton Dome.

One of his more notable projects was the East London Fun Palace (1961),^[4] developed in association with theatrical director Joan Littlewood and cybernetician Gordon Pask.^[5] Although it was never built, its flexible space influenced other architects, notably Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano whose Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris extended many of Price's ideas – some of which Price used on a more modest scale in the Inter-Action Centre at Kentish Town, London (1971).^[2]

Having conceived the idea of using architecture and education as a way to drive economic redevelopment – notably in the north Staffordshire Potteries area (the 'Think-Belt' project) – he continued to contribute to planning debates. Think-Belt (1963–66) envisaged the reuse of an abandoned railway line as a roving "higher education facility", re-establishing the Potteries as a centre of science and technology. Mobile classroom, laboratory and residential modules could be moved grouped and assembled as required.^[5]

In 1969, with planner Sir Peter Hall and the editor of New Society magazine Paul Barker, he published Non-plan, a work challenging planning orthodoxy.

In 1984 Price proposed the redevelopment of London's South Bank, and foresaw the London Eye by suggesting that a giant Ferris wheel should be constructed by the River Thames.

Price was the partner of the actress Eleanor Bron. They had no children.^[6]

Price died in London, aged 68, in 2003.^[6]

In 2002, Price was awarded the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.^[7]

Notes

Further reading

• Hardingham, Samantha (2016) Cedric Price Works 1952–2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective Archived 24 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine a two-volume anthology, co-published by the Architectural Association (AA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
• Bron, Eleanor and Hardingham, Samantha, eds. (2005) Annotations: v. 7: CP Retriever, Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA), London
• Hardingham, Samantha (2003) Cedric Price: Opera, London: John Wiley & Sons, London.
• Hardingham, Samantha and Rattenbury, Kester, eds. (2007) Cedric Price: Potteries Thinkbelt. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-43412-6
• Hughes, Jonathan and Sadler, Simon, eds. (2000) Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom, Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism. Oxford: Architectural Press. ISBN 9780750640831
• Muschamp, Herbert (15 August 2003) "Cedric Price, Influential British Architect With Sense of Fun, Dies at 68" (obituary) The New York Times
• Price, Cedric (1984) Cedric Price: Works II, Architectural Association; republished in 2003 as Cedric Price: The Square Book. London: Wiley-Academy, London.
• Staff (ndg) "Cedric Price" Design Museum
• Staff (22 August 2003) "Cedric Price, A leading light of the 'megastructure' movement whose work was guided by amusing and inspirational ideas" (obituary)^{[dead link]}. The Times

• Finding aid for the Cedric Price fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (digitized items)