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Last edited 08 Oct 2026

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Norman Fellows Researcher Website

BMI by Cedric Price: A Documentary Study

The five pages examined here are from AD/6/71, the BMI material in Cedric Price's surviving records.

1
2 AD/6/71 — Page 364
3 AD/6/71 — Page 365
4 AD/6/71 — Page 366
5 AD/6/71 — Page 367
6 AD/6/71 — Page 368
7 Working Notes

[edit]

This article represents a documentary study of BMI, a thesis subject proposed by Cedric Price (CP) in the Spring of 1972 in response to my letter seeking advice. Its purpose is not initially to explain the project, but to establish what kind of architectural investigation CP's surviving material records.

[edit] AD/6/71 — Page 364

PROPOSITION

... that BMI is presented as an existing body of activity whose future development requires a new headquarters — BMI-HQ — and the page begins to treat the headquarters itself as an architectural proposition.

[edit] AD/6/71 — Page 365

PROPOSITION

... that BMI should be understood as a changing pattern of activities, areas, frequencies, capacities and connections — and the building should be organised to accommodate that changing pattern.

[edit] AD/6/71 — Page 366

PROPOSITION

... that BMI is conceived as a building whose spatial organisation is distributed across levels and capable of being modified through its internal elements, rather than as a collection of permanently fixed rooms.

[edit] AD/6/71 — Page 367

PROPOSITION

... that BMI is conceived not as a fixed building but as a changeable physical system: structure, enclosure, servicing and circulation are separated sufficiently to permit alteration, extension and contraction over time.

[edit] AD/6/71 — Page 368

PROPOSITION

... that CP is showing BMI as a time-dependent system whose structural, servicing, circulation and communications components permit its physical extent and internal configuration to change in response to changing use.

[edit] Working Notes

BMI Page 365 — the proposition

I would formulate it approximately like this:

BMI is presented as an existing body of activity whose future development requires a new headquarters — BMI-HQ — and the page begins to treat the headquarters itself as an architectural proposition.

That is already more interesting than simply saying “this is a page about BMI.”

There are really two things being placed together:

BMI as an organisation/activity — something already existing, with a range of functions, interests and relationships.
BMI-HQ as a new architectural requirement — a headquarters that would somehow accommodate, support or extend that activity.

So the page is not merely asking “What is BMI?” It is beginning to establish a relationship:

existing organisation → changing requirements → new architectural situation

And that is important for our investigation because CP is apparently not presenting BMI-HQ as an ordinary building commission.

The question becomes: what sort of architectural situation does the page make visible?

And this is where I would resist jumping ahead

We should not yet write:

“BMI was suitable for a thesis because it involved an open-ended, indeterminate architectural brief.”

That may eventually prove to be true, but Page 364 has to earn that interpretation.

Instead, we can ask:

What does CP actually show us about the relationship between BMI and its proposed headquarters?

Then, page by page, we can look for evidence of things such as:

what BMI actually does;
who or what it connects;
whether its activities are fixed or changing;
what the HQ is supposed to accommodate;
whether the architectural requirement can be stated as a conventional brief;
and, crucially, whether CP's representation itself begins to alter the way we understand what a headquarters might be.

That last point may become very important.

So I think our working proposition for Page 364 should be:

Page 364 establishes the architectural proposition of a new BMI headquarters by placing an existing and apparently developing organisation in relation to a new architectural requirement.

And then our immediate question is not yet “Why thesis?”

It is:

What does CP's representation of BMI tell us about the kind of architectural requirement that BMI-HQ is intended to answer?

BMI Page 365

Page 365 is a very significant page, because we can now see rather clearly what CP is doing with BMI, rather than merely being told what BMI is.

And I think the proposition on this page is more precise than simply “BMI needs a new building.”

Page 365 — the proposition

BMI should be understood as a changing pattern of activities, areas, frequencies, capacities and connections — and the building should be organised to accommodate that changing pattern.

That is what the upper chart is doing.

It does not begin with rooms and then ask how they might be arranged architecturally. It begins with activities:

large hall
small halls
music studio
film/drama studio
craft/design studio
exhibition areas
catering
relaxation
societies' stores
hobbies workshop
library
information
council/committee
British Council
BMI offices
porters
caretaker
theatre
professional space
science research preparation
seminar rooms
open university
planetarium

And then it crosses those activities with four variables:

activity → area → frequency of use → capacity

That is already quite a remarkable departure from conventional architectural briefing.

But the crucial thing is the temporal dimension

The frequency of use field is not incidental. The chart is asking how intensely and how often different parts of BMI are used over periods measured in weeks.

So the building is not represented as a fixed collection of rooms.

It is represented as something like a temporal matrix.

Some activities occupy substantial area but may be used intermittently; others occupy relatively little area but are in continual use. Capacity varies too.

That means the architectural requirement cannot simply be:

“We need a room of X square metres.”

It becomes:

How much spatial capacity is required, for what activity, at what frequency, and for how many people?

That is a much more dynamic conception of the building.

And then the lower diagram changes the argument again

The lower half is not another room schedule.

It is a network diagram.

BMI's activities are connected to:

television
radio
CCTV
external monitors
digital transmission
landline communication
computers
videotape
discs
paper tape
magnetic tape
microfilm
library documents
printers
transport
external links.

And there is a central CONTROL node.

So we now have two different descriptions of BMI on the same page:

1. The upper diagram:
what happens, how much space it requires, how frequently it happens and for how many people.

2. The lower diagram:
how information, communication and material move through the institution.

That seems to me to be the real significance of the page.

The building is being described as a system of relationships.

And that makes the right-hand text particularly important.

The text says that BMI needs to take advantage of existing city facilities, while also having regional and national accessibility; that there should be no duplication of existing facilities; that the building must accommodate both present and projected activities; and that there should be a high degree of mechanical and electrical flexibility.

The final paragraph is especially revealing:

“the value of internal flexibility must be exploited.”

So flexibility isn't an aesthetic property of the building. It follows from the changing pattern represented in the diagrams.

I think this is where our earlier clearing really pays off

On Page 364 we were asking:

What is CP actually showing us here?

On Page 365 we can answer much more confidently.

He is showing us a method of representing an institution before fixing its architecture.

And that is potentially very important to our question:

What was it about BMI, as CP understood it in 1971, that made him recommend it to a young architectural student looking for a thesis subject?

Because BMI offers Norman something unusually rich to investigate.

Not simply a building.

Not simply a client.

Not simply a programme.

But a live institution whose activities, capacities, frequencies, communications and spatial requirements are all changing.

And therefore a case in which the relationship between what architecture is and what architecture does becomes unusually visible.

One thing I would not do yet

I would resist jumping from this to:

“Therefore this is an example of anticipatory design.”

We're not quite there yet.

We've got something more solid at this stage:

Page 365 demonstrates the character of the subject CP was putting before you.

It is a subject in which change is already embedded in the description of the institution.

That is a much stronger evidential position from which, later, to ask why CP thought it suitable as a thesis.

And I think the next useful move is to examine the upper chart itself extremely closely — particularly what those red blocks, white spaces, stars and min/max capacity bars are actually telling us. That may be where the page becomes even more revealing.

BMI Page 366

This is a particularly useful page to pause over, because it moves us from what BMI is intended to contain on pages 364–365 to how CP proposes that the building actually operates spatially.

Page 366 — Plans, sections and datums

The page presents four plans of the BMI building at different levels:

main grade (datum)
intermediate grade (datum + 4.35)
intermediate grade (datum + 6.6)
upper grade (at datum + 9.6)

So the drawing is not really a conventional single-floor plan. It is showing BMI as a vertically stratified system, with activities distributed across several datums.

The repeated 1.2 m grid is important too. The grid is not merely graphic notation: it appears to provide the underlying dimensional discipline within which the various spaces, barriers, circulation routes and services are organised.

There is also a small legend identifying:

That is revealing. The drawing is concerned not simply with rooms but with degrees of fixity and variability within the building.

What CP is actually showing us

I would describe the proposition on this page as:

BMI is conceived as a building whose spatial organisation is distributed across levels and capable of being modified through its internal elements, rather than as a collection of permanently fixed rooms.

That is a significant step beyond page 365.

Page 365 gave us the activities, areas, locations, frequencies and capacities.
Page 366 begins to show us the spatial mechanism by which those requirements might be accommodated.

And notice the circulation. The plans repeatedly show movement routes, ramps, lifts, stairs and openings connecting the different levels. The building is therefore being represented as a system of relationships through which people, activities and spaces move and change.

The handwritten comment is especially interesting

At the top CP writes:

“It's a bit sad that the most modern theatre was still very conventional …”

and then refers to the “THEATRE SIDE OF BUILDING.”

That is worth preserving in our reading.

It means that CP is not presenting these drawings as a completely successful or unquestionable solution. He is looking critically at his own proposal. Even within a building explicitly concerned with flexibility, he recognises that one part — the theatre — remains conventionally conceived.

That gives us an important distinction:

flexibility is not simply something BMI possesses. It is something that the design is attempting to achieve, with varying degrees of success.

And that fits remarkably well with the question we have been carefully approaching.

The sequence is now becoming quite clear

If we put the three pages together:

364 — Proposition

What is BMI, and why is a new BMI-HQ proposed?

365 — Programme

What activities does BMI need to accommodate, and with what areas, locations, frequencies and capacities?

366 — Spatial response

How might those changing requirements be organised within a building whose spaces and relationships are not entirely fixed?

That is a very useful progression.

And there is something else I think we should not yet jump over.

Page 366 gives us the first really substantial visual evidence for what CP may have meant by recommending BMI to you. Not because it is an extraordinary building in itself — indeed his own note says that part of it is disappointingly conventional — but because BMI appears to be a vehicle for investigating the relationship between changing activities and a building's capacity to accommodate them.

That is a much stronger evidential basis than saying simply “BMI was flexible.”

BMI Page 367

Page 367 is a significant change of register. Pages 364–366 established what BMI is, what it is intended to accommodate, and something of its spatial organisation. This page begins to show BMI as a system capable of alteration.

I would describe the proposition of the page as:

BMI is conceived not as a fixed building but as a changeable physical system: structure, enclosure, servicing and circulation are separated sufficiently to permit alteration, extension and contraction over time.

That is, I think, the central proposition here.

What CP is actually showing us

There are four closely related things on the page.

1. A structural frame

The large perspective drawing makes the structural idea unusually explicit. We see:

suspended beams;
a framed external skin;
internal wall panels;
the distinction between the structural frame and the enclosure.

The handwritten notes are important. The skin panels are individually framed for particular uses — light, ventilation etc. — while the inner wall panels relate to internal safety/use conditions and can be omitted.

So the building envelope is not being presented as an immutable architectural surface. It is a variable component.

2. A servicing/support system

The small XX elevation and plan diagrams reinforce this.

The language is almost industrial:

hinged & braced sliding skin support frames

The skin is therefore something that can be opened, moved, repositioned or replaced, rather than something permanently attached to a conventional building envelope.

That matters because the previous pages have been concerned with activities. Here CP is beginning to show the physical means by which the building can respond to those activities.

3. Change is represented explicitly as a sequence

This is perhaps the most important part of the page.

At bottom right we get:

stage one — for economy
stage two
totally enclosed volumes replaced by [something] for mobile ...
final stage
planning variations and extensions

And underneath:

Buildings can shrink in order to grow.

That handwritten sentence is particularly revealing.

It reverses the conventional assumption that architectural development means simply adding more building. BMI can apparently contract, alter its enclosure, accommodate different configurations and subsequently expand again.

So change is not an afterthought to the building. It is one of the building's designed characteristics.

4. Time has entered the architecture

This is where Page 367 connects strongly with Page 365.

On Page 365, CP was mapping:

activity → area → location → frequency → capacity

Now Page 367 is effectively asking what physical arrangement can accommodate those changing requirements.

So we can tentatively see a sequence:

Page 364
What is BMI? Why a new BMI-HQ?

↓

Page 365
What activities does BMI have to accommodate?

↓

Page 366
How are those activities spatially organised?

↓

Page 367
How can the physical building change in response?

That makes Page 367 more than another collection of drawings. It is where the BMI proposition begins to become architectural system thinking.

And this is where the word "system" becomes justified

I think we should resist saying too quickly that CP is presenting a "flexible building". That's true at one level, but it is too weak for what is actually on the page.

The page is showing a relationship between:

structure
→ skin
→ internal partitions
→ servicing/access
→ use
→ extension/contraction
→ time

The interesting thing is that these are being treated as separable variables.

The building therefore acquires a kind of capacity for change.

And that takes us back to the question we carefully arrived at before looking at the pages:

What was it about BMI, as CP understood it in 1971, that made him recommend it to a young architectural student looking for a thesis subject?

Page 367 gives us another piece of the answer — but not yet the whole answer.

It suggests that BMI was potentially interesting because it offered an opportunity to investigate architecture where:

the building is not the finished object; the building is a framework through which changing activities can be accommodated.

That is much more specific than saying "BMI was an interesting building" or "BMI was flexible."

One particularly interesting phrase

I would put a small marker beside:

“Buildings can shrink in order to grow.”

Not because we should make it into a grand theoretical statement prematurely, but because it is CP's own handwritten formulation on this particular page.

It seems to capture something that the drawings are demonstrating: change can involve subtraction as well as addition.

And that is a rather unusual conception of architectural development.

So, for our page-by-page record

I'd provisionally catalogue Page 367 as:

367 — Structure / servicing / circulation / change

Proposition:

BMI is conceived as a physically adaptable system in which structure, enclosure and internal elements can be altered, moved, omitted, extended or contracted to accommodate changing requirements over time.

What CP is showing:
Not merely a building, but the mechanisms by which the building can change.

What this adds to the emerging BMI proposition:
BMI moves from being an organisational programme to being a designed capacity for change.

And I think we should now be careful about something important: we haven't yet established whether CP invented this conception specifically for BMI, whether it was characteristic of his work more generally, or how much of it was actually the work of the BMI team. Those are precisely the kinds of distinctions we should preserve as we continue through AD/6/71.

BMI Page 368

Page 368 is a very significant page in the sequence. If Page 367 gave us the structural/servicing/circulation logic, Page 368 takes the next step: it shows what that system is intended to do over time.

Page 368 — Growth, contraction, communications, future use

The central drawing is not simply another description of the building. It is a description of the building as something capable of alteration.

The key evidence is the combination of:

primary structure;
table floors;
suspended “tray” floors;
surface concourses and ramps;
lifts and circulation;
the clearly articulated communications network;
and, most importantly, the explanatory comment about the building shrinking physically during its useful life.

The drawing therefore seems to be asking us to look at BMI not as a fixed building but as a system whose physical configuration can change.

1. The printed Comment is crucial

The boxed text says, in effect:

all work stopped late 1970...

because of a change in local policy. It then explains that the earlier inflatable temporary theatre had been abandoned after a cost-over-time assessment favoured constructing the more expensive Stage 2 initially.

Then comes the really important proposition:

“This building would have to shrink physically (see stage 3) for its 15–20 year usefulness to be exploited.”

That sentence changes the status of everything we have been looking at.

The building is not conceived as having a final, stable form.

Its usefulness is understood as something that unfolds through a period of time, during which the physical extent of the building changes.

And then:

“I feel permits the heavy active loading of the site initially.”

So there is an explicit relationship between:

initial extent → active loading → subsequent contraction → continued usefulness.

That is much more interesting than simply saying that the building is flexible.

2. Contraction is not an afterthought

The phrase “would have to shrink physically” is unusually strong.

CP is not saying:

the building could be adapted.

He is saying that its continued usefulness requires physical contraction.

That gives us a much more precise idea of what BMI is doing.

The large diagram shows the structural and servicing infrastructure capable of supporting different occupied configurations. The implication is that the permanent infrastructure and the temporarily occupied parts are not identical things.

That distinction is already visible in the drawing:

structure → floors → circulation → activities

are separable layers.

So the building can change without the whole system having to be rebuilt.

3. The communications network is equally important

The final part of the Comment is particularly revealing:

“I hoped its fragmentation could be co-ordinated with that of central Birmingham...”

and then:

“The proposed communications network may be applied elsewhere — as is the cleansing boom.”

This takes us beyond the building.

BMI is being conceived as something whose parts can be fragmented and coordinated, while the communications infrastructure itself has a potential life beyond BMI.

So there are really two scales operating simultaneously:

BMI as a changing building

and

BMI as an element within a larger communications system.

That is a significant distinction.

4. The handwritten notes reinforce this reading

The blue note at the bottom says:

“In effect, 2 systems — one portal — one suspension with floor-deep hangers deck-sliding info circum...”

And beside the cleansing boom:

“CLEANSING BOOM. 3 in all. Human bodies / cleanest no longer necessary. Good!”

The handwriting is therefore not merely annotating the appearance of the structure. It is testing the system in terms of alternative technological and operational possibilities.

The little diagrams labelled a–a, b–b, c–c are similarly concerned with how the structural/servicing skin works rather than with producing a conventional architectural section.

This is another indication that what we are looking at is system investigation.

So what is CP actually showing us here?

I would formulate it rather carefully:

CP is showing BMI as a time-dependent system whose structural, servicing, circulation and communications components permit its physical extent and internal configuration to change in response to changing use.

And the Comment gives us the unusually explicit temporal proposition:

The building begins large, accommodates heavy activity, and subsequently contracts so that its usefulness can continue over 15–20 years.

That is considerably more specific than simply calling it a “flexible building.”

And this brings the five pages together

I think we can now see a progression through Pages 364–368:

Page	What CP is showing
364	The proposition — what BMI is and why a new BMI-HQ is proposed
365	The activity — what happens, where, how often, and at what capacity
366	The spatial consequences — plans, sections and datums
367	The system — structure, servicing and circulation
368	The temporal behaviour — growth, contraction, communication and future use