Cedric Price

Photo: Anil Bawa-Cavia (joanofarctan) on Flickr a-nc

Cedric Price: Think the Unthinkable

Open daily, 10am-7pm until 2nd March

Bartlett School of Architecture, Wates House, 22 Gordon Street London WC1H 0QB

Exhibition website: http://ads.org.uk/ms/access/cedric/index.html

Cedric Price (1934-2003) was an architect who built almost nothing, yet his theories, his teaching, and above all his visions of an alternative society enabled by transient communications technology, have shaped the development of architecture since the 1960s. This exhibition presents Cedric Price’s two most influential schemes of the 1960s. The first is the Fun Palace, a project proposed by Price and radical theatre-director Joan Littlewood as an alternative to the civic theatres, cinemas and recreation centres of the 1950s and 1960s.

The second is Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, a project which challenged the thinking behind the New Universities which were being built to increase access to higher education in the 1960s. This exhibition puts each of the projects in its historical context, and explains them in Price’s own words and those of his contemporaries.

The exhibition features a series of steel models of the Thinkbelt scheme, as well as film of Price discussing his architecture, and illustrations from his archive in Canada.

The exhibition is curated by Barnabas Calder, University of Strathclyde Department of Architecture, designed by NORD Architects, with graphic design by Graphical House. The exhibition was produced by Architecture + Design Scotland and brought to London by the Bartlett School of Architecture.