Project MEMORY BANK identifies, reconstructs and eventually displays the thinking of the British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003) by assembling a living history through his network. The project tells the story of Cedric Price (CP) by interviewing a number of people that were close to him.
To stay in CPs tradition, a truly INTERACTIVE form of display has been devised with The Office for Nonfiction Storytelling and designers Maarten Mieras, Bruce Moerdjiman and Ronny Wieckard.
Project motive
CP broke the conventional boundaries of architectural practice by continuously employing a broad pallet of potential design variables engaging formal, infrastructural, organizational, operational and ethical factors into all of his design propositions. It is this level of complexity that both sets Price apart as an architect and obscures the great potential of his profound design ideas. This provides the impetus for my research.
Project MEMORY BANK intends to trace and register sections of the person and the world of CP through a newly conducted research. The projects main goals are to address the gap in the available history of CP and to assemble a device for a more intelligent form of access to the existing archive. CP used architecture as an instrument to deal with issues that were not strictly architectural. The particular relevance of CPs thinking can be attributed to his broad views on the world, which in turn were obtained through his engagement with people. These people came from various backgrounds and with diverse interests and formed Cedrics network. The available history on CP documents his work (SQUARE BOOK, OPERA, POTTERIES THINKBELT, COMPLETE WORKS) his archive (RETRIEVER) and it provides a series of dialogues with him (CONVERSATION SERIES, HUO INTERVIEWS). However, the breach in this available history is the absence of the structure that CP embraced most: his network.
The history of CP cannot be limited to the cataloguing of his work and his words. To understand and eventually reveal the great potential of CPs profound design ideas, we need to come closer to him and understand more of the circumstances and processes in which the ideas were formed. This moment is the last chance to retrieve a set of first hand experiences and to reconstruct the context of CPs life. The generation carrying the memories of CP has reached an age at which concerns about their continued ability to share these memories is increasing. This is the last opportunity to capture, through his network, the unique thinking of this highly influential architect.