Social regeneration and Cedric Price's unbuilt projects

IE School of Architecture and Design professor Marcela Aragüez explores the role of Price’s unbuilt legacy for Western architectural culture in the academic journal arq: Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University).

Conceived as infrastructures, Price's unbuilt projects - such as the famous Fun Palace, Potteries Thinkbelt, or Magnet - were formulated as productive objects with a profound commitment for socially regenerating the contexts into which they were to be inserted.

For Price, the social role of architecture was tightly linked to the capacity of the built environment to be adapted by its users. Buildings should be understood as temporary commodities, malleable objects with a short lifespan dictated by their usefulness for the community.

Why this research matters: An exploration of the work of Cedric Price can serve as inspiration for architects looking to understand radical and utopian approaches that include a committed social agenda.

Access the journal article in full here.

Citation: Aragüez, M. (2021). Building Calculated Uncertainty: Cedric Price’s Interaction Centre. Architectural Research Quarterly, 25(2), 108-124.