Drawing Notation of the Queen Victoria Building
A fun palace full of activities defined by pieces of architecture (Fun Palace Cedric Price)
When looking to reproduce a ‘Fun Palace full of activities defined by pieces of architecture’ in a building around UTS, I came to the conclusion only a few buildings could represent Cedric Price’s ideals accurately. I chose the Queen Victoria Building as the base structure of my take on Price’s Fun Palace.
Analysing Price’s Fun Palace there are a few salient features within his ever-changing “socially interactive machine” (The Square Book p.24); large entrances on each side and a long promenade stretching from each side of the structure. Attempting to meld both designs together I incorporated the QVB ovular levels and iconic hanging clock into a bare bones structure reminiscent of the Fun Palace.
What made Price’s design for the Fun Palace so iconic was his futuristic and adaptable theory of what architecture should be. He believed architecture shouldn’t be permanent and should be highly adaptable to shifting social and cultural conditions of time and place. This anti-structuralist thesis behind his design was a product of living in post-war Britain in a highly structuralist and authoritarian period. I believe this was the origin for his premise of ‘architecture under constant construction’. Price’s Fun Palace was made by a large steel frame, pivoting cranes, prefabricated walls, platforms, floors, stairs and ceiling modules. The space allotted for popular events could be ‘grown’ and ‘shrunk’, it was a virtual architecture which could adapt to the needs of the populace.
Mimicking Price’s ideas and drawing techniques in an orthographic orientation allowed me to produce a building adaptable to an urban city lifestyle with a structural likeness to Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and representative of the Queen Victoria Building. Notably the QVB’s design layout appropriates a social hierarchy which contradicts the entire premise of Price’s Fun Palace. The semiotic value of space grows with each level, I endeavoured to use its grand design and incorporate it into a Fun Palace that the general population could use and enjoy. I made sure to reproduce the salient ovular levels as an adaptable viewing platform and include the iconic hanging clock as a timepiece and information platform for the general public to access. Furthermore in an effort to represent Price’s ideals for and adaptable and ever-changing architecture I avoided drawing in areas and shops where I thought they should be and rather drew the spaces and the architecture that would allow users of the building to decide what the space would be used for. Hence my focus upon the heavy framework and salient features of Price’s Fun Palace and the QVB creating ‘A fun palace full of activities defined by pieces of architecture’.
Reference List:
Cedric Price, 2003. Cedric Price — The Square Book (Architectural Monographs (Paper)). 1 Edition. Academy Press.
