Cedric (John) Price

Cedric Price founded Cedric Price Architects, London, in 1960 and began his practice with an aviary for London Zoo, designed in 1961 with Lord Snowdon and Frank Newby. Among his other realized projects are the Inter-Action Trust Community Centre, Kentish Town, London; the Olympic Information Complex for the Munich Olympic Village; Stratford Railway Station; and Dockland Development for Hamburg, Germany.
Price's reputation and influence rest chiefly, however, on the radicalism of his ideas. Among his highly original proposals are the Fun Palace in London; the Potteries Thinkbelt Project, which imagined the re-use of an abandoned railway line for a roving university located in the train carriages; and the Trondheim Student Centre Project (with Archigram Architects). Characteristically, Price argues against the production of permanent, specific spaces for particular functions, stressing instead the need for flexibility and the unpredictability of future use. He has consistently defended the importance of modern technologies in architectural design and construction. At the same time, he seeks to analyze the specific motivations that might give rise to a structure in the first place. »Technology is the answer«, he has said, »but what was the question?«
Cedric Price received his undergraduate degree in architecture from Cambridge University in 1955 and his diploma from the Architectural Association in London in 1957. His work has been published in many journals and modern architectural histories.