Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

An Evening of Cedric Price: a talk by Samantha Hardingham

10 June 2019 - 18:30 - 20:30

£10

When he died in 2003, at the age of only 68, Price had been running his architectural practice for over 40 years, producing some of the most incredibly imaginative and experimental architectural projects of the time.

His catalogue of built projects is very limited: amongst them is the remarkable Aviary at London Zoo for which the Earl Of Snowdon (himself an aspiring architect, having completed only one full year of the course at Cambridge) called on Price in 1961 to help him realise a vision for the project.

However, it was Price’s parallel career as a thinker, philosopher and teacher which mainly gave rise to his significant influence. He worked in 1961 with the “Mother of Modern Theatre”, Joan Littlewood, then running her renowned Theatre Workshop from the Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London:  together they formulated the concept of the Fun Palace, an experimental model of a participatory social environment: skilfully setting the scene 10 years later for Richard Rogers, whom Price had taught at the AA, to win the Pompidou Centre competition.

Moving nimbley ahead of the architectural profession in the 1960s, Price sought to oppose permanent buildings that were limited to a particular function: surveying the industrial decay of the time in his native Staffordshire, he proposed reinvigorating the area with the creation of a new elite technical university, whose campus would be completely mobile and based on a network of teaching spaces and laboratories on existing railway lines which could move from place to place to form different configurations as required: the “Potteries Thinkbelt” of 1963-66.

Samatha Harding remains the principal authority on the life and career of Cedric Price and published the definitive work on him in 2016. She will focus on the making of this remarkable book project: assembled over a period of nine years.

Price:  Docomomo members £6, students £6, non-members £10

Details

Date:
10 June 2019
Time:
18:30 - 20:30
Cost:
£10
Event Category:
Website:
https://www.docomomo.uk/

Organiser

Docomomo
View Organiser Website

Venue

Docomomo
77 Cowcross Street
London, EC1M 6EJ United Kingdom
+ Google Map

Courses and events across the built and historic environment sector. (Mobile users scroll down for calendar and categories)