A fun palace full of activities defined by pieces of architecture

-Fun palace 1961 London by Cedric price-

Cedric price was able to capture his ideas, imagination and understanding of architecture in one design called the fun palace. Even though he was the most visionary architects in his time most of his works never came to life. The idea of creating designs that don’t exist (only in prices mind and sketches) exaggerates his unique approach lateral approach to architecture and urban inventions. The idea of designing buildings without making them a reality reveals the fun side of architecture going against architectural processes and strict thinking.

The fun palace was a building designed as an entertainment centre to the public. Containing all kinds of facilities for different interests. Additionally by using the correct use of technology the public could have complete control over their environment, resulting in a building responsive to the visitor’s needs. Similar to price I tried to mimic the ideas, techniques the fun palace portrays and Price’s approach to architecture. I drew the queen Victoria building near central. The QVB contains facilities relevant to the urban city lifestyle. The first level contains food stores, cafes etc. The second level is full of stores ranging from jewellery to professional clothing. The last level has high class restaurants, cafes and food courts.

In contrast to the fun palace the QVB has some kind of social hierarchy from level 1 to 3 (lowest to highest class). I wanted to modify this design to broaden its visitors and show what new activities are included in the design. Price included people in his design to show the mass scale of the design and how the facilities and design is run and used by the public. In my design I excluded any texts or store labels like Price did to allow the audience to decide what stores should be included in the QVB, I also included people shopping and eating. If you look closely you can see the food court is a mix of different sitting areas to match all kinds of people (appreciating individualism). I paid close attention to the structure as in Price’s sketch did, not focusing on what’s inside the stores. Similar to Price’s fun palace it says architecture should be modified according to the user and allow for fun to return to designs.

• Queen Victoria building — My Final drawing

Draft drawing- Experimentation