MARISTELLA CASCIATO 0l1}Jr. · MONIQUE ELEB lOlls SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN SANDY ISENSTADT 1\1())) 1~I~NIS1\IS MARY LOUISE LOBS INGER Experimentation REINHOLD MARTIN in Postwar
FRANCESCA ROGIER Architectural Culture
TIMOTHY M. ROHAN
FELICITY SCOTT
JEAN-LOUIS VIOLEAU
CORNELIS WAGENAAR
CHERIE WENDELKEN
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England (OJ >000 Centre Canadien d'Architecture/ PHOTO CREDITS Preface 9 Canadian Centre for Architecture Allantic Film and Imaging: figs. 6.9,6.10, Calavas: and Massachusetts Institute of Technology fig. 9·7: CCA Photographic Services: figs. 305, 5.1-5.9, Introduction: Critical Themes of Postwar Modernism '0-4; Ian Vriihoftrhe Netherlands Photo Archives: SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN AND REjEAN LEGAULT II The Canadian Centre for Architecture figs. 11.3-11.7: John Maltby: fig. ,.2; John R. Paollin: "po rue Baile, Montrbl, Quebec, Canada H3H lS6 fig. 3-'; Peter Smithson: fig. 3.,. 1 Neorealism in Italian Architecture MARISTELLA CASCIATO 25 ISBN 0-.62-0"/208'4 (MIT) COPYRICHTS Contents The MIT Press (, Alison and Peter Smithson Architects: figs. ;,I-B, ;.5, 2 An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism; Five Cambrid~ Center, C.mbri~, MA 02'42 10.6; © Arata Iso"'i: figs. 12.7, u.S; © Balthazar Ecochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-Afrique cover, figs. 6.2, 6.3: © Bertha RudofSL),: figs. 9.2, MONIQUE ELEB 55 All righ.. reserved. No part of this hook may be repro 9.4; © Courtesy of Kevin Roche John Kindeloo and duced in any form by any electronic or mechanical Associales: figs. 6.9,6.10; © IBM Corporation; figs. 6.1, 3 Freedom's Domiciles: means (incl~ding photo~opying, recording, or infor, 64 6.6-
Senior Editor: Lesley Johnstone 9 Bernard Rudofsky: Allegories of Nomadism and Dwelling Production Manager: Oems Hunter FELICITY SCOTT 21 5 Translation: Barry Fifield, Neville Saulter Editing: Edward Tingley, Marcia Rodriguez., 10 ACritique ofArchitecture: Peter Smith The Bitter Victory of the Situationist International Reproduction Rights: Jocelyne Gervais JEAN-LOUIS VIOLEAU Index: Eva,Marie Neumann 239 Design: Glenn Goluska 11 Jaap Bakema and the for Freedom CORNELIS WAGENAAR 261
12 Putting Metabolism Back in Place: The Making of a Radically Decontextualized Architecture in Japan CHERIE WENDELKEN 279 Coda: Reconcephlalizing the Modem SARAH WILLIAMS GOLDHAGEN 301 Contributors 325 Index 328 MARY lOUISE LOBSINGER
Cybernetic Theory and the Architecture of Performance: Cedric Price's Fun Palace
~~ We just haven't learned how to enjoy our new freedom: how to tum machinery, robots, computers, and buildings themselves into instruments of pleasure and enjoyment. CEDRIC PRICE
To pry the subject free from the stifling repetitions of everyday convention and to nurture an emergent individuality - these were the aspirations that galvanized the Fun Palace Project. As archi tecture, it would be purely utilitarian and purposeful: a mechanical slab served as a provisional stage to be continuously set and reset, sited and resited. What was expected to happen in the Palace was as diagrammatically diffused as the contraption itself. It wouldn't be the polite space of municipal geranium beds or fixed teak benches; rather, it was conceived as a social experiment that would fuel both conflict and cooperation.l Sometime in 1960 Joan Littlewood met and became friends with Cedric Price. Littlewood, a veteran of the English radical theater scene, was on the brink of resignation after a nearly thirty-year fight against establishment and commercial entertainments. Prior to the Second World War she had been a member of the Theatre of Action, a left-leaning theatrical company working out of Manchester that favored Brechtian aesthetics and agit-prop street theater.l In 1945 she co-founded the Theatre Workshop and during the 1950S had some success in advancing the cause of experimental theater. At the time of their meeting, Price was still a young architect on the London The Modem Mcwement scene. He was teaching at the Architectural Association, socializing Popular Culhwel within a circle of young aspiring architects with a penchant for tech e-ydayLiIe nology, and was acquainted with architectural critic Reyner Banham.4 AnIi'ArchiIedu", The meeting would prove auspicious. Littlewood's desire for a new Democraiic Freedom kind of theatrical venue where her performances could flourish uncon Homo Luden. strained by built form became the inspiration for Price's architectur
Primitivism al imagination. In tum, their project for a Fun Palace became the Aulhenticily vehicle through which the architect developed his idea for an anticipa
Architecture's History tory architecture capable of responding to users' needs and desires.
Regionalism /Ploc. 119 The Fun Palace was a proposal for an Price's ideas for a technologically inno infinitely flexible, multi-programmed, twenty vative, 'non-deterministic' architecture four-hour entertainment center that marries of planned obsolescence couched in terms communications technologies and industrial of Littlewood's conceptions for alternative building components to produce a machine theatrical practice produced the quintes capable of adapting to the needs of users. A sential anti-architectural project, the Fun grid of servicing towers supports open trusses Palace. Littlewood's aesthetic was character to which a system of gantries are appended ized by an emphasis on direct commu for maneuvering interchangeable parts (from nication between audience and performer information monitors to pre-fab units) into and, importantly, on a communication that position (fig. 5.1). Circulation elements com stressed physical form over speech as the prise moving catwalks, escalators. or travela means of expressing content.9 The idea tors (suspended, stair-like, and ground-level that the form of theatrical experience should systems). The conventional determination be dynamic ran counter to the well-oiled of built form as an enclosure or legible enve proscenium-framed productions of bourgeois for functional requirements is supplant theater. Littlewood's work thrived on con ed by an idea of environmental control in flict, employed interactive techniques, drew 5.1 Fun PoIace; perspedi.... lea River slle, 1961-65. Ced.-ic Price, archllec1 and drallsmon. Photo reproduc1ion of 0 pholomontoge on mason lie. CCA Colledion which, for example, adjustable sky-blinds on a variety of popular genres and media perform the role of roofing and the task of from pantomime to music hall to film spatial division is assigned to mutable barriers and television, and adapted environmental described as movable screens, warm air forms such as festivals with the aim of engag British taste for quaint old theaters.ll This expressive of spatial qualities or formal screens, optical barriers, and static vapor ing the sensory and physical partiCipation first drawing minimally articulates Price's characteristics - but then there really isn't zones. 5Programmatic elements with specific of the audience in the action. 10 In keeping architectural intentions (fig. 502). The repre much, in the way of architectonic qualities functional requirements such as kitchens with her early communist roots, theater had sentation of the program is limited to a or materiality, to describe in the Fun Palace. or workshops are housed in standardized a pedagogical function. By the end of the few hand-scrawled notations: a long-distance As Price himself laconically noted, "It's a enclosed units sited on temporary, mechani 1950S, however, given rapidly changing observation deck, large viewing screens, an kit of parts, not a building" - one that he cally fitted deck-panels. 6 The structure is social and political imperatives. a burgeon inflatable conference hall, and an area desig doubted would ever look the same twice. B serviced by a three-dimensional grid and ing of mass media and consumer culture, nated for eating and drinking that is identi Ifthe initiation of the project seems rather an uariable net of packaged conditioning and the tum of the Left to an ideal of par cal to a space labeled "open exhibition." fortuitous, the ensuing campaign of fund equipment" distributed across a gigantic ticipatory democracy. the tactics of radical A floating volume labeled "circular theater raising and promotion, negotiations with plinth housing a sewage purification plant theater required reassessment. Theater as part enclosed" is the most substantial clue jurisdictional bodies such as the London and other support systems. The ever-pragmat a forum for instruction was no longer an to programmatic content. By Littlewood's County Council, meetings with residential ic Price proudly declared it a uself-washing effective instrument where the pressing con account the drawing was inexplicable, more associations, and the struggle to find a site giant" capable of continually cleansing itself cern was to awaken the compliant subjects diagram than suggestion for built-foIDI, the constituted a colossal undertaking that could with recycled river water, and suggested of an affluent consumer society. Welfare identifiable objects being gantries, esca only have been impelled by a passionate that the site not be less than 20 acres.' This State passivity had to be countered through lators, and various level markings within belief in the social necessity of realizing description patently challenges the idea of motivated, self-willed learning. Littlewood's a thin-lined filigree-like structure of towers the project. 14 Littlewood spearheaded the architecture as shelter, as enclosure, or as theatrical expertise and social mission were and trusses. 12 Of the more than four hundred effort with Price managing the architectural a permanent signifier of social values. Here well met by Price's wit and architectural drawings consisting of time schedules, aspects. In 196, she enlisted the help of the concept of architecture as conveyor of objective: to produce an architecture that movement diagrams, mechanical drawings, Dr. Gordon Pask, an expert on teaching symbolic expression has been forfeited for a could accommodate change. details. and some perspectives (figs. 5.3 to machines who Littlewood characterized as fully automated and, above all. transient According to Littlewood, Price pro 5.7), this initial conceptual sketch still accu the "romantic doyen of cybemeticians."15 machine. Reyner Banham approvingly com duced the first sketch for the Fun Palace rately captures the essence of the scheme. 111at same year Pask formed the Committee pared it to a "gigantic erector set."s in response to her complaints about the The perspective is more locational than for the Fun Palace Cybernetic Theatre,
MARY LOUISE LOBSINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE 121 ...... _- ~~~iii#;>OI" - .~ .,...,...-..... t\'-' ~ \Nvv ",----...... \ \,'" \~.. ",,-, "a~.. fA ;·tt~~ I"-~ ~I _ • ~_ " -- .. ~~ c;._~~~
?;~-..;...-,
!.~.--'..... n...... •. ~~ -'===~.~[j:; ~~'" D!i~~!~, • , '" II I, " 'n, :.--.:::"'..~ ""","-~ ...... -'"""~ o""n ~ ,,- ~~, ."~ .. " - ~ ------,', r{ 5.3 Fun Palace; diagrams for pilot projoct, 1961-65. Cedrie Price, on:hilecl. Pen-onc>;nk with IeIHip pen an vellum. CCA Collection
5.2 Fun Palace; interior perspective ,ketch showing mickec!ion, 1961-65. Cedric Prico, orchiled and drafbmon. P."","",nk on trocing vellum, CCA Collection
which added a new twist to Littlewood's idea activity,I7 The implicit consequence of the of direct communication,l6 With the exper project: an institutional critique of Welfare tise of an unusual interdisciplinary commit State-administered culture. tee now in place, the goals of the project were refocused: no longer merely the pro Representing Architectural Reality: From vision of a barrier-free venue for experimen Image-Based Anti-Formalism 10 Technological tal theater, the technological mandate Ephemerality moved beyond the realm of mechanical Price's proposal for a technologically factual mobility into the more ephemeral mobility system of assembly a mobile architecture offered by new information media and mass that eschewed architectural image communications, The discrete disciplinary recommends itself to Banham's ideas about interests of the three protagonists - cybernet the true vocation of architecture as pro ics, transient architecture, participatory the mulgated in Theory and Design in the First ater and communications merged in the Machine Age (1960). Banham's revisionist objectives of the Fun Palace project; to history of the modern movement was cou 5.4 Fun Palaeo; interior per>pe<:li... showing ..apended mezzanines and slairways, 1961-65. Cedric Price, arehiled. facilitate the emergence of an ephemeral pled, in the book's last chapter, with a radical Pe!KInc>;nk on phologroph. CCA Collodion subjectivity through the theatricality of com prognostication for the future of architec munication, Thus began a working rela ture. In a polemic chastising architects of tionship spanning more than a decade of the first machine age for their preoccupation
MARY LOUISE L08SINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE 123 with the representation of technology, Group, which, in response to the insularity Banham challenged the architects of the of tradition-
MARY LOUISE l08SlNGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN FA LACE 125 Smithsons and others, he challenged Team role within debates about architecture and Ten's ideas of social collectivism, for exam technology.31 For cutting-edge technological ple, on the gTOunds that in promoting forms visionaries such as Archigram, Price was more valid in the past than the present, they the man to watch, but for those who thought fail to address the needs of an emergent soci architecture had a visually communicative ..... ety in which transience and fluctuations in role inextricably bound to optical appropria t population and group appetites will generate tion, his work was anathema to everything new and often unpredictable urban forms. architecture might stand for. 32 But for Price, For Price, "The needs of a new mobile to ask what meaning might look like was society and communication systems which to pursue the WTOng line of inquiry; when serve it invalidate existing town planning confronted with new technologies (both techniques of fixed building hierarchies and mechanical and cybernetic) and new modes anonymous space.',2(l The Primer, he notes, of scientific analysis (such as systems design surely identifies the pertinent issues of the theory), conventional notions of architec times, but Price was not convinced of Team ture were rendered moot. 33 Price believed Ten's commitment, due in part to their no premium could be placed on what
logic. The crux of his doubt centered on be considered meaningful experience, or 5.6 Fun Paloce; diaglllmmolic sec1ion, 1961-65. Cedric Price, architoct. Pen and black ink, grophik!, ond dry trcns!er the ambiguous use of texts and images. For how it might be achieved or represented in on lTacing \'&Ilum. CCA Collec1ion example, the work's authors rightly advance of use. In fact, architecl5 were not to the phenomenon of mobility as a con in the business of providing meaning at tributing factor in the development of urban all; according to Price, their task was to solve ism and yet, Price asked, is mobility worth problems and extend the possibilities of l4 investing with architectonic importance choice and delight. Collective meaning, a .-. __ A simply because it is there?27 Price wondered if the word can be used in this context, was whether we were not simply being confront to be deciphered from within a dynamically .. ---~-I""""t:\I' ed, once again, by the aesthetic of the early interactive field of communication. To this -foil· .~' - ",.,...~~ modernists, which visualized mechaniza end, Price aimed to provide an environment 1"'-.-1,.,.1 - .,-, ,', T:c~.:!Lf r...L II tion (real or imagined) rather than utilizing that would both anticipate and accommo ~ .. # ..nJ .. .! l' r .!"::.:':'~- new technologies?28 Taking existing form date change." It was envisioned as a giant ~[I ., ,l"I \:. r c.. t ,,"-;;;.- as evidence for their critique, Team Ten's leaming machine with the capacity to ~lJ;lL- ~. "-_-""""-r' . reliance on "the found" as reality neglected enable humans to physically and mentally r:.r::-''nt" -~~"- the complex ways in which cities really adapt to the intangible experiences and 16 worked "in spite of their physicallimil5."29 accelerated pace of technological culture. i For Price, both the group's criticism and its In one of his earliest musings on the project 01.-, ....._.... __...... theory of production failed to offer, in his Price stated: ...... = ..
!!!!i!'""~'._,~,L: • __, words, "a well-serviced mobility.,,3o These last points - mobility and an insistence that Is it not possible that with a little imagination nrn is not necessarily visibly evident we can ourselves lind a new way of learning, new are issues he has adhered to ever since and things to Jearn, and enjoy our life, the space, 5.7 Fun Pala<:e; dioSlllmmotic plan, 1961-65. Cedric Price, orchilect. Graphite, colored pencil, perKlnd-ink, and balJ.poinl pen on mylar. CCA Collec1ion continues to develop to this day. the light, the knowledge, and the inventiveness Although the Fun Palace was never real we have in ourselves in a new way?l7 ized, Price achieved such notoriety with this and other projects such as the Potteries Thinkbelt as to secure for himself a seminal
MARY LOUISE LOBSINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE 127 critique of the Welfare State: An:hiIecture ease the transition into the real-time of the written to convince legislative boards, the The new towns rise, as do the television aerials, and Technologicaly Enhanced Perfurmativity information age. rhetoric of pleasure is accompanied by argu dreaming spires; the streams flow, pellucid, In a statement typifying Pricean ambiguity, In a conventional sense, the Fun Palace ments for amendments to land-use through comprehensive school; the BBC lifts Price claimed that a structure should stand as architecture had no intrinsic meaning and for the elimination of redundant pro up our heam in the morning, and bids us good only as long as it was socially useful. To as a machine; it was merely an abstract gramming brought about by borough-to night in the evening. We wait for Godot, we ensure the temporality of the Fun Palace, machine that when activated by the users borough competition for new leisure and shall have strip-tease wherever we go .... 52 Price assigned a ten-year life to its structural was capable of producing and processing cultural facilities. 46 In later briefs the cultural frame 38 But temporality was not simply inforrnation!Z In this way it may be consid mission becomes more pointed: the Fun Muggeridge captures the sense of social a matter of planned obsolescence, or the ered performative, for only at the moment Palace was a leaming machine that enabled complacency that attended the success interchangeability and disposability of of transaction between user and machine self-participatory education through the of Welfare State cultural and educational various building components; rather, time would meaning or content be expressed, interface between man and machine, policies and the economic prosperity of the was intended to playa dynamic role in and at that moment would expression be between human beings, and, in keeping 19505. The leveling of social experience human perception - dynamic in the cyber identical with the act of perfonning. Further with the cybernetic theory it suggests, not to be mistaken for a leveling of the class netic sense of real_time. 39 more, in the act of performing, the between smart machines:7 According to structure - and the anaesthetization of soci The production of the social and the indi and spatiality of the architecture would be Price, the Fun Palace would be "a short ety was perceived by some intellectuals as vidual- both physically and virtually - in annulled for the ephemerality of pure, ume term life toy of dimensions and organization a situation nearing crisis. Two responses to real-time is the theoretical crux of the Fun , communication. For at the most not limited by or to a particular site, which this cultural uncertainty, Richard Hoggart's Palace. Reiterated in the Fun Palace briefs literal level, activities such as the maneuver is one good way of trying, in physical terms, The Uses ofLiteracy (1957) and Raymond is a soft leftist critique arguing that the disci ing of building components or the group to catch up with the mental dexterity and Williams's Britain in the Sixties: Communi. plinary regime of time is dictated by a mar determination of a program involves a basic mobility exercised by all today.- As a short cations (I¢~) attempted to analyze the crisis ket-place that artificially divides a worker's form of social interaction. It was also imag term exploratory toy, it would require the in view of the proliferation of mass-media life into work-time and leisure-time, a regi ined that the Fun Palace would be equipped "coordination and cooperation in i1:5 day to communications. Written in a nostalgic mentation of time that is materially enforced with the latest in communications technol day operations oflocal authorities, the State, vein, The Uses ofLiteracy reads as a lament through the zoning of work and leisure in ogy: reading machines, televisions, and industry, private organizations and individ for the loss of an identifiable working class 4 urban space.40 For Price, this archaic sense computers. ' These scientific gadgets held uals."49 And in i1:5 various designations and for the erosion of indigenous forms of time ran counter to the emerging real the promise of thrusting the participant as toy, university of the stree1:5, or laboratory of popular culture. 13 Hoggart targeted the time of cybernetics and its network of invis beyond mundane reality and into a virtual of pleasure it was not merely another con pulp-print culture of tabloids, dailies, and ible services. The conflict between the realm of communication. tainer of amenities for Welfare State enter romances as the cause of both the trivializa simultaneous time of information and the The earliest stated objectives fur the tainment. In As Littlewood and Price stated tion oflife and the individual's distancing disciplinary time of work (of schedules, time Fun Palace were "to arrange as many forms in 1962: from concrete social reality. He argued tables, industrial production) had to be of fun as possible in one spot, to make that despite the rise in literacy, the profusion amended for humans, to allow them to adapt moving in all directions, on feet or wheel, The present socia-political talk of increased of iunk culture had become debilitating, to the flux and flow of the future technolog a delight, to provide conditions which make leisure makes both a slovenly and dangerous especially for the most vulnerable group, ical world. In the article "Non-Plan: An everyone part of the total activity and to assumption that people on one hand are suffi the working class, which easily succumbed Experiment in Freedom" of 19~, Banham, exploit drinking, necking, looking, listening, ciently numb and servile to accept that the to its appeals to conformity. Distinctive class Barker, Price, and Hall almost paraphrase shouting, and resting ... in the hopes of an period during which they eam money can be characteristics - communal bonds, local an earlier statement by one of the founders emption or explosion of unimagined social little more than made mentally hygienically wisdom and ethics, and, importantly, tradi of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, when they ity through pleasure:+! At first glance this bearable and that a mentality is awaken [sic] tions in speech, ~the guying of authority claim that the cybernetic revolution must agenda seems typical of calls during the during self-willed activityH by putting a finger to the nose" - disap be accompanied by a revolution in human I¢oS for theatrical self-expression as a route peared in the programming of homogenous thought and required a new mental and to personal liberation. But Price was quick This reiterated a commonly voiced criticism appetites. \4 Hoggart's problem with mass physical mobility.-!l Fun Palace as a diagram to say that what he had in mind was not of British social conditions. In 1960 Malcolm publications was not that they debased taste matic architecture of probability in present "a mecca for conventional free-will activ- Muggeridge described the routinized and but that they over-excited it, eventually time would act as a temporary measure to In the early documents, presumably self-satisfied Welfare State in vivid language: dulled it, and would finally kill it - "they
MARY lOUISE LOeSINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PAlACE 129 enervate rather than corrupt" -leaving Control and Communication: From numb and passive subjects.;5 The problem Participatory Architecture 10 a Cybernetic was political: who controlled the prolifera Learning Machine - 3 tion of mass media; who formed and whetted If programmatic components such as an the appetite for it? automated information library, a news room, In his analysis of mass-communica auditoria. rallying spaces, and committee, lions technology in British culture, Raymond therapy, and research rooms seem rather Williams did not worry about the loss of unusual for an entertainment center, and cultural distinctions but feared for the evolu if some of the assertions about the Fun .A tion of an educated and participating democ Palace seem naively optimistic ("the Fun To the J:liddle Procadure racy. 56 Williams claimed that Britain had Palace is both a pleasure arcade and an been quick off the mark to employ new instrument which motivates the media technologies for cultural and educa passive participant into thinking more tional purposes in the belief that via the abstractly," or "scientific gadgets, new sys :from the middle ailwaves, a classless and egalitarian society tems, knowledge locked away in research procedure composed ofliterate and rational subjects stations can be brought to the street corner"), / Upper Level Prooedure would emerge. However, by the late 19505 it what is one to make of Littlewood's state .. was clear that the ideal of the ailWaves as a ment that "the 'fun arcade' will be full of space of freedom outside the market was no games and tests that psychologists and elec longer tenable. Between the paternalistic tronic engineers now devise for the service 1 educational policies adopted by BBe culture of war - knowledge will be piped guardians and the imperatives of the com juke-boxes"?60 To understand this we must mercial market there seemed to be little examine the contribution of the Fun Palace \l room for the kind of communication that Cybernetics Committee, specifically that Williams thought essential for the growth of of Dr. Gordon Pasko \ '" - a truly democratic society.5i Williams argued Pask's "Theatre Workshop and Systems To uppor leval 1'"'_ that democracy depended on free, sponta Research: Proposals for a Cybernetic r: neous communication and, significantly, Theatre" offers some insight into the degree The·F• m Fm that it had no predetermined form, for of his commitment to the project. After a few Preforence next "when put into practice could it be felt to be introductory remarks - such as, "the crux of Valuation J,ptivity Assertion scluotion real."58 He called for a rethinking of British a Cybernetics Theatre is that an audience cultural institutions and proposed the forma should genuinely participate in a play" and tion of new kinds of bodies, such as Commu that it should overcome "the restrictions in t F~Zj in sot ~ I nications Centers for research and analysis. entertainment media such as cinema and !mLb.. However, more urgent was the need for a television" - Pask proceeds to outline, in where ordinary people could exercise rather opaque technical jargon, a cybernetic Lower Luvol Procodure - givon individual chOOSing rj, choice and effectively exert control within an analysis ofthe problem (fig. 5.8).61 He then 8Jld.?\. (n) = r i (n}Zj(n) uncensored network of communications. 59 provides some of the most initially baffling DLiGRAi1 1. but fascinating diagrams of the entire pro
ject. It seems that in Pask's theater the seats 5.B Fun Palace; diagram lor a cybemelics theater from minule' of the Cybernefic> Commiliee, 27 Jonuory 1965. would be equipped with controls allowing Cedric Price and Gordon Pa.k. Pitolocapy en wove poper. CCA Collection the audience to intervene in the action of the play.62 A computing machine located backstage would calculate audience input
MARY lOUISE lOBSINGER CEORIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE 131 and relay the results to actors on stage. sian of information. According to Norbert In a letter to Gordon Pask in 1964, becomes a floating control replacing the If the hardware proposed seems awkward Wiener, "information is the content of Littlewood grappled with the use of "sensory disciplinary time scales of closed systems.,,76 and amusing by comparison with current what is exchanged with the outer world as apparatus to receive infonnation about The archaic space and time of work and developments in electronic communication, we adjust to it and make our adjusbnent participants."n She argues that "it is right leisure is dissolving into a continuous aggra the terms both Pask and Littlewood use felt upon it."67 To adapt, to live more effec in a project of this kind to advance beyond vated pressure-control where seminars at remind us of where communication technol tively within the complexity of modem the bounds of respectability and to move work, continuing education, and upgrading ogy was developed and the kinds of assump life, it was necessary to have adequate infor into the hinterland of things ... far we then exams in business or even the most "ludi tions made about human mation feedback. 611 will know a great deal about how to control crous game shows" are presented as interaction.6> To fucilitate learning and help people people and how to make them means far motivating humans to learn and In this context a brief description of cyber live in a scientific culture, the Fun Palace Man, she claims, is mast at home in sur to produce.77 This, for Deleuze, is a mare netics is in order. Cybernetics arose would be eQuipped with calcu roundings that, like the processes going on nefarious kind of control - invisible, appar the Second World War in connection as cooperative in his mind, are continually developing and constraining at the same by twa or three people evolving. Evidently surprised at the territory time. In this context, the words that accom or m<1lVlllual teaching machines) with she has entered, Littlewood submits that pany the promotion of the Fun Palace the idea that these would assist people to "oddly enough, the whole bases of this enter healthy competition to motivate self-willed responses of pilots in combat. A learn cooperative behavior and develop prise is [sic1the recognition that man is not learning through the stimulation of appetites, control system that accurately analyzed mes speed in observation and deduction.69 an automaton.»7+ She had wandered into self-regulation to achieve group consensus sages between two combatants was of interest There would be c1osed-circuit TVS and sur strange territory indeed. Littlewood was override the light-hearted pleasure-seeking as a means of controlling the outcome of veillance systems by which participants concocting a project about which she could sense of the project, which in itself might battles. Postwar research on information could "experience the emotional thrill and innocently say that, be thought of as a farm of control. 78 feedback systems focused on a less antago power" of watching themselves participate70 nistic but equally competitive model of It seems clear that the initial ambitions The operators in the social system are like Contribution and Conclusion human interaction. In keeping with the for the Fun Palace have shifted focus, from mirth and sensuality. Its operators are actions At this juncture it is clear that the Fun classic definition of cybernetics as the study an alternative theater venue to a cybernet or intentions or changes in the shade of joy Palace project was a free-wheeling explo of "control and communication in animals ic learning machine. or grief. We can to some extent control these ration arising from a cross-disciplinary and machines," research concentrated on This escalation of the goals of the transformations, though, in this case, we and committee that entertained extreme notions how systems organize themselves - that is, Fun Palace did not pass unnoticed through our machinery act as catalysts and most of the of what a building might be and how or how they reduce uncertainty and achieve Committee meetings. At the meeting on computation is done as a result of the interac why it was necessary to 'educate' the ITI3sses stability by adapting, cooperating, and com 27 January l¢S a meandering exchange tion taking place between membelli of the for a new technological culture. The cross peting or basically how systems learn to about the character of fun is fallowed by population, either by verbal discourses, or by based, as was survive. 64 One of the basic axioms of cyber reaffiml3tion of the ambition to "merge competitive utilization of facilities, or by the Fun Palace itself, on ideas borrowed netics has it that messages contain informa education with the field of entertainment," cooperation to achieve a common objective.75 from systems-design theory, especially that tion accessible to the communicator but nat only to provoke a challenge from one mem of self-organizing systems - ITI3y be its most to the recipientD' - humans are like black ber who objected to the overemphasis on The suggestion here of behavior-modification significant contribution to recent architec boxes, receiving input and out simple-minded mechanization: "People are techniques gives way further on to rural history and theory.79In the early stage put but having no access to our awn or any too intelligent to be duped by an automaton tions of the program in the cozying terms of Price's career, the architect was not expli one else's inner life.66 In cybernetics, it for long," and such thinking had made the of festival days, pranks, children's nurseries, cit about his use of systems-design theory was irrelevant whether a signal or message Fun Palace "redolent of a Scientist's toy and the experience of pleasure. but it is clear that this first adventure offered had gone through a machine or a person; and nat necessarily something intelligent Within this discussion, it is not fur-fetched him a willing client and the right circum the priority was to facilitate pure communi human beings would enjoy."" The Commit to mention the work of Gilles Deleuze stances for putting an experimental design cation wherever and however it occurred. tee struggled to define the project: was it on emergent forms of social control. In Post and method into play. 80 This interdiscipli Systems analysis and computational a fun fair or a night school? Were they trying script on Control Societies, Deleuze argues nary process, where Price's contribution is machines were imagined to be SOCially to tum out obedient participant citizens or that "control societies are taking over from limited to architectural expertise, can be beneficial, for they fucilitated the transmis- provide an unusual amenities facility? disciplinary societies," and here" control understood as a means of circumventing the
MARY lOUISE lOSSINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE 133 finality of architectural fonn as a represen the impoverishment of the most significant Briefly returning to the ideas that gal 1 Cedric Price. "A Me"",!!:e m Londoners: draft lOr a tation of pennanent social values and also part of human experience, the built envi vanized the Fun Palace, of the conceptual promotional brochure for the Fun Palace, Canadian S Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Cedric Price as a non-authorilarian gesture wherein ronment. ) Ayear earlier Price's Potteries contrarieties that pose problems for the Archive Ihereinafter Price Archive]. unique authorship is overruled by the organi Thinkbelt project had faced criticism from claims underlying the project, the most 2 Document dated 18.2./4, Price Archive. zational system. The project, conceived as within architecture when George Baird obvious is the idea that an architecture that DlU99S:0l88:,.6. a diagram of possibilities, seemingly allayed argued that the apparently neutral, hands accommodates change, the very mode of 3 On Littlewood', contribution In British radical theater. see Howard Goomey, The Theatn Work the problem of overdetennination in plan off design strategy was nothing less than a consumption itself, might possibly be effec ,/wp Storr (London: Eyre Methuen, .<)8.) or Joan ning, since as a system ready at thinly veiled attempt to restructure the codes tive in awakening the compliant subjects of Littlewood, Joan Littlewood', Peculiar History as all times to be put into action, it refused of architectural language. Baird stated that the paternalistic Welfare State. This counter She Tells It (London: Methuen, '994). On her near traditional notions of the architectural disci Price's refusal to provide "visually recogniz intuitive idea suggests that Price held out retirement in ..)61, see Coomey, "Coodbye note from Joan," 185. News clipping from The Observer plining of space and time. able symbols of identity, place, and activity" for a value-free notion of capitalist entrepre ('0 July 1966), 9. Price Archive, box <;/5, Mareh At the mention of control systems and the and his reduction of architecture to a neurialism against the bureaucracy of the 1965-September 11)66. "rve spent thirty years in the lax behaviorist psychologizing to machine for "life-conditioning" displayed state. Within this ideological frame, spon theatre, and I never want m .ee it again. If, dead, all that i. over; people have got to be able to come happiness, one is inclined to recoil in a gross misconception of architecture's taneity and consumption are not obverse and go, look at this or at that, have three rings 84 amused disdain. But this would misinterpret place in human experience. For Baird, sides of the coin. Despite the fact that this to cboose from or if. all compulsion. ThaI's why and misrepresent the contribution of the pro Price's architecture-as-servicing mechanism optimistic vision of individual, active par I want the Fun Palace: Goome)" 11. Manifesto ject. Certainl)" by the end of the 19605 an was equivalent to architecture as "a coffee ticipation within free enterprise implies of the Theatre of Action: "The commercial Theatre of Ar:tion i. limited by its dependence upon a anti-technology bacldash was felt in both pop vending machine."s5 that enabled participants might somehow ,mall section ofsociety which neither desires, nor ular culture and architecture. For example, Beyond these humanist critiques there take hold of the market, one is compelled dares m face the urgent and vital problems of today. Alvin TofRer's Future Shock (1970) saw tech are aspects of the Fun Palace that are pre to ask at what point spontaneity and choice The theatre, if it is to live, must of necessity rellect the spirit of the age. This spirit is founded on social nology as "spinning out of control" and scient of issues surrounding the use of infor passes over into pure consumption?86 As conflicts which dominate world history today- argued that the accelerated rate of change mation technologies and analytical processes perceptive critics have already pointed out, the raOO of ;,000,000 unemployed, starving for manifest in all facets of life was pushing associated with computational thought that within late capitalism the distance between bread while wheat is bumed for fuel.. .. This theatre social processes to the brink of socio-psycho have been taken up in some current critical choice and control on the one hand and will perform, mainly in working.elass districts, SI plays which express life and struggle. of the worken. logical shock. Future Shock is not the most architectural practices. Despite the fact that market deternlination on the other is Politics in its fullest sense, means the affairs of sober assessment available of the state of systems-design theory, as a non-hierarchial, uncomfortably narrow. the people ...: society and technology, but its hyperbolic more democratic process of problem-solving 4 In conversation with Cedric Price, November ,<)96. gloss is significant in that it captured popular and producing architecture, has been shown Conversation with Roy Landau. 2 March '999. 5 Price Archive. box tl5· sentiment and signaled a retreat from the to be patently false, the updating of its theo 6 'Fun Palace Project Report: March 1965. Price optirnism that had welcomed the "dawn of retical premises and the recent interest in its Archive, box 5. the second machine age."fll By 1970 the very means of analysis (particularly dia 7 Cedric Price, "Fun Palace for Camden Town: Architectural Design 37:11 (November 1967),52>.. 'techniques which were to sponsor human gramming) has made a positive contribution On the scale of the development. see "Fun Palace liberation, to facilitate the emergence of a to architectural theory. Many of these prac Project Report; 5, 9, where he refen m the first Mill participatory democracy, to de-institutional tices share with Price a concern about the Meads site along the River Lea. lAter estimations ize education and put scientific knowledge design process - that is, the desire for a gen for siting pilot projects limit the area to 2.5 acres. It is quite ..mni,hing to imagine a lO-Ilcre mechani in the hands of the masses were viewed as erative aesthetic process as a means of usurp cal plinth. At the time ecology WlI.S not the issue it instruments of social control. The hoped-for ing fomlalist predilections, as a means to would become by the early 19705. transformation to new social configurations fully engage the potential of new technoltr 8 Reyner Banham. "A Clip on Architecture." Design Quarterl)' 63 (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, within mass communication and the cyber (such as computer software), and as a 1965),13· netic dream of an evolved human perceptual kind of radical utilitarianism. In the 1960s, 9 Goomer,a. awareness through human-machine inter as today, the Fun Palace offers architects a 10 Baz Kershaw, The Politics ofPer(ornu;.nce: Radical face had succumbed to disillusionment. challenging conception of architecture that Theatre as Culturallnte1Wlltion (New York: Routledge. 1991), 103. TofHer himself cites Price's Fun Palace privileges organization and idea over archi 11 Littlewood, 701. as an instance of technocratic thought and tecture as built form. II Littlewood, 7""
MARY lOUISE lOBSINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S FUN PALACE 13S 13 Littlewood, 70'. the Scholar to Return ro Hi. Studi.. (London: See Cedric Price, "The Potteries Thinkbelt; 40 For a concise description of the shift from discipli 14 On 1& May 1<]63 Price applied to the London Fefrer and Simons, 1¢.). Archirectuml Design 36:", (October '966), 483. nary regimes to control societies, see Gilles Deleuz.e, County Council (Lee) to use'land along the River 20 Banham. Theory and Daign, 327-30. 3' See Peter Buchanan, "High-Tech: Another British "Postcript on Control Societies: Negotiation.. Lea. Mayor Lou Sherman approached the Civic 21 The fiftieth-annivenary issue ofTh. Architectural Thoroughbred: The Architecturnl Review 1037 '97~"!9o, trans. Martin loughin (Ne'" York; Trust with a request lOr a feasibility study. They Review provides some interesting insights into the (July 1')83), '5-'9. Buchanan cites the Plateau Beau Columbia Univenity Press, 1995), In-B2. found support with Leslie Lane, director of the visual approach. The editorial claimed that one of bourg as the direct descendent of the Fun Palace. 4' Reyner Banbam, Paul Barker, Peter Hall, and Civic Trust, and located a site in Mill Meads. How il> aims over the previous fifty yea.. had been visual Also see H. Muschamp. who views the Fun Palace Cedric Price. "Non-Plan: An Ei MARY LOUISE LOBSINGER CEDRIC PRICE'S fUN PALACE 137