The Fun Palace by Cedric Price was a conceptual project which ‘was not a building in any conventional sense, but was instead a socially interactive machine, highly adaptable to the shifting cultural and social conditions of its time and place.’ (Mathews S. 2005, p. 73). The British architect was in collaboration with Joan Littlewood who ‘had conceived of a new kind of theater designed to awaken the passive subjects of mass culture to a new consciousness.’ (Mathews S. 2005, p. 73).
‘In approaching the design of the Fun Palace, Price began by considering Joan Littlewood’s “theatrical” brief as a problem not of static and solid “building”, but in terms of a new kind of active and dynamic architecture which would permit multiple uses and which would constantly adapt to change.’ (Mathews S. 2005, p.79).
His approach of architecture can be seen in Figure 1 where the movement of different types of audience and activities are recorded by black dotted lines. Similarly, I made a draft of things I wanted to include in my drawing in regards to “Fun Palace” (see Figure 2). I used the brushed lines to show the movements of the people found inside this conceptual “Fun Palace” and dotted lines to show the movement of the elements that would make up a “Fun Palace”.
The whole idea of making a “Fun Palace” was to invite common citizens within to escape from their everyday routine like work to rather lead them onto a journey of learning and creativity. Similarly, for my final outcome, I considered how my idea would be capable of maintaining change and at the same time inviting the citizens to escape from their everyday routine. So, I created a 2-D view of what my idea would look like in response to “Fun Palace” (see Figure 3). Similar to Cedric Price’s idea, I have created a space where every bit of the building is always on constant move. From lift that can move horizontally and vertically to the glass panel which always changes according to different time (along with the Apple logo), slide mechanisms with hydraulics systems that can change it’s position, stairs that can be used in any direction (by using ropes), tables that move up and down while rotating, along with different activities that invite people to socially communicate with each other, etc.
Reference List:
Mathews, S. (2005), ‘The Fun Palace: Cedric Price’s experiment in architecture and technology’, Technoetic Arts 3:2, pp. 73–91.
Glynn, R. (2005). Fun Palace — Cedric Price. Interactive Architecture Lab. Available at: http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/fun-palace-cedric-price.html [Last viewed 23 Apr. 2018].