This week we had a presentation on a project called Fun Palace that was designed by Cedric Price (unbuilt). It was to inspire and give information to us about the current project that we’re working on right now. I really enjoyed learning about the project and here are some of the notes that I’ve taken while listening the presentation.
First of all this is a project that was designed by Cedric Price so let’s get to know him: He is a British architect who was born in 1934 and died in 2003. He is the builder of Aviary at Regents Park Zoo and besides this he has many unfinished projects that he designed. He is called ‘one of the most visionary architects of the late 20th century’ He is very famous by the method of his design: He designes in terms of time; instead of measuring with meters he considered how much time people will spent there.
He started designing the Fun Palace with collaboration to Joan Littlewood started in 1962. They wanted to design a place to keep people busy-entertaint when industrialisation created a lot of leisure time for people. It was designed so that the place can adapt to changing of the cultural envirenment. so we can say that it wasn’t an ordinary structure it was a machine that adapts to cultural and social factors. it was designing a dynamic innovative program.
It was ment to give pleasure to people and a lot of boundaries were blurred in the building. There was no permanent set of relations. His design was creating ”gaps of uncertainity” by combining different/contrast qualities of the spaces such as:
- work – leisure
- education – fun
- success – failure
- boredom – overwork
- loneliness – lack of privacy
- wich – poor
- summer – winter
He also considered the space’s as kit programs. The things that would happen in the place and designed accordingly. For example; inital program proposes: eating, drinking, dancing, resting, photography, drama& operatics and cybernatics-processed program proposals: star gazing, instant cinema, recording sessions, gossip revues, observation decks and food laboratories..
To me it is a very interesting project. While listening I was looking forward to see the finished structure but to be informed that it was infact unfinished project that never get to built really disappointed me. To see how these ideas would come to life would be great and it is a need of the world in my opinion. I think it really helped me to realise how to achieve ”gaps of uncertainity”
Here is a sketch of the interior of Fun Palace:
Here is also a diagramatic drawing of the place:
My Way To Arch 