Memories and celebration of the legendary and much-lamented architect Cedric Price (1934-2003) accompanied Friday’s Architecture Association launch of the two-volume A Forward Minded Retrospective, written and edited by Samantha Hardingham. This magnum opus records the projects, talks and articles of the man described by admirer Rem Koolhaas as “a kind of puritanical Oscar Wilde” who “with lapidary epigrams, skeletal drawings and a polemical genius […] changed the terrain of architecture.”
There was all of the above in abundance at the AA’s day-long event, presided over by one of Price’s inimitable self-portraits, and dominated by his inimitable humour and humanity, as well as his vision and originality. The architects Will Alsop and John Lyall were among the former Price employees who recalled the extraordinary range of callers to the Alfred Place practice. Among these were Princess Margaret; “Big Willy,” minder to East End gangsters the Kray twins; Lord McAlpine, the Tory grandee and advisor to Margaret Thatcher; and Norman Willis, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress.
Price was as famous for many of the projects that he didn't build—most notably the unrealized Fun Palace culture centre for London’s East End, devised in the 1960s with radical theatre director Joan Littlewood—as the few that he did, such as the aviary at London zoo, co-created with Lord Snowdon. But what also emerged out of the day was the extraordinary prescience of some of Price’s lesser-known “secret projects”. These included his work in the late 1960s on the expansion of Heathrow airport; the conversion of St Pancras railway station into a shopping concourse decades before it actually happened; and the drawing up of a detailed code—the McAppy Project—to improve every aspect of working conditions in an infinitely more thorough, humane and meaningful way than the government’s subsequent health and safety legislation.
Throughout, there were constant reminders of how seriously Price took his fun. This ranged from the special fly-swallowing frog headdress he created for his practice’s Freddo Frog cricket team, to accounts of the office’s exuberant annual May Day celebrations. Many of Price’s key words and sayings peppered the day, such as “stay crispy”; “never take a decision until you have to”; and, crucially, “never trust a man with big feet and a small head.” According to Price’s long time consort, the actress Eleanor Bron, who rounded off proceedings at the end-of-day reception with a heartfelt speech, this was a man who was “a thorn in the flesh” and a “corrective” to the architectural establishment. And who, in every aspect, “lived according to his principles.” RIP CP, we will not see your like again.