PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Samantha Hardingham is an architectural writer, editor and curator and has been a design studio tutor across all years at the Architectural Association since 2008. She graduated from the AA in 1993 and her publishing work began then, with several editions of the original ellipsis architecture guide series. She was senior research fellow in the Research Centre for Experimental Practice at the University of Westminster from 2003-09 where she collaborated with Archigram's David Greene on his L.A.W.u.N #19 & 20 book and exhibition (AA, 2008). Samantha was Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal in 2009, and has since lectured internationally and curated a number of exhibitions on Cedric Price's work including at the Venice Biennale (2011) and Bureau Europa, Maastricht (2014).
In a way, the role Price played in architectural history is that of the Last Amateur, a fate he shared with Buckminster Fuller, 40 years older but occupying a similar niche. The two iconoclasts shared a certain holistic expertise, a non-scientific scientism, trying to make new connections across an exploding terrain of information and knowledge. This is the cybernetic dream of the harmonic reconciliation of man and machine, but it's one that was swiftly professionalised and monetised. Price couldn't have his career now, as nobody would come looking for his advice. Why go to a brandy-swilling boffin when there are so many biddable consultants you could tap up instead? Despite the disappointments, the radical core of Price's work is that it tackled head on one of the paradoxes at the heart of architecture, namely, that true fidelity to the ideas of Modernism means the disappearance of the building. There is something fundamentally communist about this, a vision of a technologically advanced society of public leisure, freedom, learning and equality. The attempt always fails, as we just can't seem to do without walls and monuments. But it's always worth trying. --Douglas Murphy, The Architectural Review
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