Re-mapping Territories of Architectural Practice: Cedric Price and the Procedures of Social Action
Open Access
- Author:
- Vujkov, Aleksandar
- Graduate Program:
- Architecture
- Degree:
- Master of Architecture
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- August 09, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Peter John Aeschbacher, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
- Keywords:
- Cedric Price
agency
procedures of social action
program
space and social control
temporality
city as network - Abstract:
- Historical and theoretical experience has made the challenges of socially affirmative work through architecture evident. A number of approaches have been proposed to overcome the control mechanisms inherent in the built environment which inhibit the free use of space. Recently, the concepts of program and agency have been exploited to promote the possibility of socially transformative action through architectural practice. These are best exemplified by the work of Cedric Price, who utilized notions of program as a changeable entity. Price envisioned an architectural product which, aided by computational knowledge and through communication networks, promoted social interaction and enhanced users’ capacity to act independently within the structure of society. Price’s idea of program is based on the model of a living organism that is capable of maintaining its integrity while growing and changing with time. The current scholarship on Price has placed his work in its professional, social, and cultural milieus, and established it as a precedent for contemporary diagrammatic and network-based practices. Price’s work has been frequently cited as an example of architecture which, guided by performance and social needs and driven by ethical concerns, critically embraces the context. However, this scholarship overlooks Cedric Price’s implementation of architectural program aided by computational knowledge and his use of communication networks as a vehicle of agency. This thesis derives and labels three previously unidentified notions of program present in Price’s work and argues that he developed them in order to overcome the control mechanisms enforced by buildings on users. These notions of program are: program as an interface (architecture that interacts with users); as a memory device (architecture that learns from experience); and as an evolutionary diagram (architecture that evolves with time). From the 1960s through the 1980s Price’s work evolved in dialogue with cybernetics, an emerging model of computational knowledge; new computational programming techniques; and communication networks. These strategies advanced from the level of the architectural object to the level of the city. By closely examining his Fun Palace (1961-74), Generator (1976-79, 1989-90) and Japan Net (1985-86) projects, this thesis delineates ways for socially progressive, political work through architectural practice to be pursued in a time of digital social media and advanced software.