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Housing Research by Cedric Price

• Facsimile of Cedric Price DRWG 81 129 from the project file "Housing Research".

"It is considered essential that new housing equate more closely than at present with the major changes in social patterning. These are primarily related to increases in personal affluence, mobility and ‘free will’ or ‘leisure’ time."
(Cedric Price, 1967, ‘A change is required in our current attitude to “Housing”’, Architectural Design, May.)

[edit] Introduction

Housing Research by Cedric Price was created predominantly from 1967 to 1971. It was published in two parts, namely:—

'HOUSING RESEARCH Pt 1', in CP Supplement No.4, Architectural Design (October 1971), pp.619-630;
'HOUSING RESEARCH Pt 2', in CP Supplement No.5, Architectural Design (January 1972), pp.24-29; 38-43.

Since then, various articles have been published about Housing Research by Cedric Price - see Further Reading.

A reason for such interest has been suggested by Steve Mullen, Cedric Price's Chief Assistant on the project:—

"I think the housing studies which came out of the Potteries Thinkbelt are still very significant indeed and, you know, there are infinite ways they could be developed but the basic principles there of short-life twenty-five year renewal cycle, services as far as possible above ground, leasehold rather than ownership – in other words, the house as a machine like a car which you can park and renew when it becomes defunct – that to me is still a very important statement which has yet to be developed properly because in this country, buildings are, to quote Bucky Fuller, “Fancy nozzles on servicing systems of land”, and they are not seen as homes at all – just as investment in a nozzle.”"
(Steve Mullin, 2016)

The project, including 131 drawings, is filed away in the Cedric Price fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Thus the purpose of this article is to bring Housing Research by Cedric Price out of the archive in order to discuss it.

[edit] HOUSING RESEARCH Pt 1

"Housing in the UK has been selected for investigation* since I consider it a critical element of the man-made environment which through prolonged misrepresentation and mis-applied design theory has become probably the least sensitive element of artificial human-conditioning."
"* SHORT LIFE HOUSING STUDY—U.K. Begun January 1967, due to finish 1969."
(Cedric Price, AD 9/69)

• Fig. 1: Facsimile of the opening page of 'Cedric Price Supplement No.4' - see full set of pages in Appendix 1.

[edit] • Preamble

The preamble begins with a definition of "Housing as an element in life patterning" and an imperative, namely:—

... that housing "must be continually re-examined and regraded in the scale of humane additives."

A RUGGED EXISTENCE--East Pakistani refugees find a makeshift home [...] in Calcutta - 1971.	... that anything more than the concrete drainage tubes lent to the refugees of East Pakistan is considered by private and public 'dispensers' alike as an autonomous and peculiar yet essential ingredient in life styling. ... that It has been allowed to create in Western society a self-perpetuating and exclusively interlocking supply system reinforcing the existing categories with which it is linked.
... that these categories include: the structure of investment and expenditure; land use; the structure of manufacture; the delineation by 'dispensers' of performance specifications.	... that there is an obvious shortfall in numerical provision, product choice, user satisfaction, performance.
This research and development programme — "Son of Thinkbelt" — takes an Anglicized view at the housing situation, on the assumption that not only has the National Building Agency nothing to offer Calcutta but also that the Barriadas would never catch on in Bradford.	It is only when housing is seen to be as malleable yet particular as a chocolate bar will there be valuable international exchange, public and private, of information on desirable attitudes to what could be one of the World's most enjoyable commodities — the house.
This supplement is the first part of a two part summary of this work and as such is the first and last item in the Cedric Price Supplement Series, which covers work "in progress" and such is an incomplete abstract of the total programme which will not be complete until December 1971.	Work in progress — with all its sores and dry patches — should be available to a wide disinterested, mean, critical avaricious audience if only for the benefit of the producer. More hopefully, it should provide fresh malleable information for others rather than present — as a final report does — a fait accompli to collect dust through old age.

• Pull quotes from the preamble.

Thus the points made in the preamble are sufficient to explain why Cedric Price wanted to discuss 'housing'. [1]

[edit] • Objectives

• Table 1: Clippings from Facsimiles of text in sidebars on pp.619-620 and p.621.

The key points raised in Table 1 include:—

... a re-think of a major element of public and private investment and expenditure;
... a re-think of the existing inter-relationships between land and its use;
... the means of production;
... the rate of change of methods of production and their location;
... postulating a coarse model of a potential 'housing' service;
... testing such a coarse model of service against an equally crude manufactured component in a process of constructive abrasion;
... the undesirable effects of a long-life dwelling philosophy and its associated manufacture, land tenure and financing structure;
... breaking this interlocking and restrictive system as a key point — the notional life of the building;
... applying pressure to such a lever to produce fundamental changes;
... forecasting the likely period of occupancy of a dwelling by the same occupier;
... to develop a model which approximates to the existing pattern of residential mobility in the UK.

Thus CP Supplement No.1 provides a checklist and a work programme which, together with facsimiles of the pages shown below, can be used as the basis for a discussion about 'housing'.

[edit] • Costing

[edit] • Principles

[edit] HOUSING RESEARCH Pt 2

"In the second part of this summary a bibliography will be included together with the section headings of the study. The major part will, however, be devoted to showing the physical capacity of the proposed process to accommodate particular life styles and sites rather than merely adapt."
(Cedric Price, AD 10/71)

• Fig. 2: Facsimile of the opening page of 'Cedric Price Supplement No.5' - see full set of pages in Appendix 2.

[edit] • Physical capacity

• Table 2: Clippings from Facsimiles of text in sidebars on pp.24-26.

[edit] • Components

Learn More

• Views of exploded models for a prefabricated house.

[edit] • Models

Learn More

• Views of models for prefabricated houses.

[edit] • Sites

• Facsimiles indicating developments at Rochdale (Deeplish) and the Thames near Tilbury (Muckingford).

[edit] • Housing research Subject headings including proposed mathematical model

[edit] • Production and population distribution data, site photographs and plans

[edit] • Housing Research conclusions

The change over of production and assembly processes from one area and condition to another must be accommodated even during the socio/economic life of the first production run.

No unit should be related either to the pre-assumed "room-to-activity" equation or to enclosed areas per person. The latter is only politic in establishing equivalent cost yardsticks.

The value of determinable periods for re-use of land should be set against the initial cost of limited life housing.

The limiting of life must be designed in to both the structure (eg special structures with a fixed factor of safety on key structural areas incapable of maintenance) and to the use of land already ear-marked for future development of an opposed nature.

Maximum capacity for pre-use choice of nature of initial expenditure (eg site sensing procedure).

Maximum opportunity for occupants to mess around with the house combined with minimum need — on physical well-being terms — to do so. The right to idleness must not be sacrificed.

Political appetites for alteration in the user's mind of the status of housing must not be diluted or marred by economic pressures to ensure an assumed standard or form of housing.

The development of home learning, T.V. religion, facsimile telephones, preventive medicine, unmarried parents, E.S.P., enforced idleness, pensions by Giro and other good things may well produce an invisible community environment that looks like a lot of ordinary houses — and then they may go.

[edit] Conclusion

This article concludes:—

... that Housing Research by Cedric Price provides sufficient information for others to discuss it further.

[edit] Notes

[1] "Although the research was sponsored by Cedric Price it is possible that he presented the results to the Ministry of Housing." (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2008, 'Housing Research')

[edit] Earlier Schemes

Housing Research by Cedric Price started out as a social and technical study of 'student' housing and became an economic analysis of late sixties planning policy.. The earlier schemes were published in Architectural Design as follows:—

'Potteries Thinkbelt', in Architectural Design (October 1966), pp.491-494;
'Steel House', in Architectural Design (May 1967), p.246;
'24 hour Living Toy', in Architectural Design (January 1971), pp. 28-29.

[edit] (1) Potteries Thinkbelt

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• Table 1: Models of all housing types.

"The anti-isolated-learning-community view taken by the Thinkbelt carries with it an anti-dormitory corollary. Student housing becomes an integral part of local authority housing where, because of its three-to-five year resident cycle, it is seen as offering an opportunity for researching into possible new ways of living, with new types of housing."
(Royston Landau, 1968)

[edit] (2) Steel House

• Facsimile of 'Project analysis chart' - see AD 10/71, p.622.

In a handwritten note, Cedric Price indicated:—

[OWNERSHIP PATTERN] should be PRIMARY.

• Clipping showing 'The kit of parts' (ib.).

Design of Steel House started in 1965. The file in the Cedric Price fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture documents an unsuccessful entry for a mass-produced housing system using steel. Requirements called for rapid assembly/disassembly, and flexible unit plans that could be altered by home owners and appeal to a wide range of owners and their preferences.

In a handwritten note, Cedric Price commented:—

"steel + plastic concept far too 'complete'"

[edit] (3) 24 hour Living Toy

• Pages from AD 1/71.

Cedric Price commented:—

A development of the steel house competition entry (AD 11 67) and a generator of the present Short Life Housing

[edit] Textual records

Indeed, the assumption that in relation to housing, there is a soluble problem rather than an indeterminate situation, could well cause, as such methods (of forecasting and problem solving) improve, increasingly restrictive assumptions to be made.

Why should anyone assume that such a display of intellectually edible concepts will ever reduce, when challenged with the hunger for somewhere to LIVE?

If housing is emotionally so absurdly non-redundant then, in order to enable use-producing work methods, it appears rational to embrace EXPEDIENCY as the nearest miss to correct that can be expected from a design tool.

'Expediency' cannot be incomparable like 'arbitrary' can.

• Pull quotes from 'EXPEDIENCY', p.493 AD 9/69

• Clipping from p.569 AD 9/71

• Clippings and pull quotes.

[edit] Appendix 1

• Facsimiles and collages of pp.619-630 from 'Cedric Price Supplement No.4'.

[edit] Appendix 2

• Facsimiles and collages of pp.24-29 and pp.38-43 from 'Cedric Price Supplement No.5'.

[edit] References

Canadian Centre for Architecture (2008) 'Project: Housing Research, 1951-1998, predominant 1967-1971', AP144.S2.D67, Cedric Price fonds.

Domestikit (2017) 'Domestikit', 3D Warehouse.

Fellows, N. (2021) '"I'd like to discuss this"', Wordpress, November 29.

Mullin, S. (2016) in 'Cedric Price Day Part 1', AA School of Architecture on YouTube.

Price, C. (1966) 'Potteries Thinkbelt', Architectural Design, October.

Price, C. (1967) 'Steel House', Architectural Design, May.

Price, C. (1967) 'A change is required in our current attitude to “Housing”', Architectural Design, May, in Extremely Provocative.

Price, C. (1969) 'Expediency', Architectural Design, September.

Price, C. (1971) '24 hr Living Toy', Architectural Design, January.

Price, C. (1971) 'A note on fixed life evolutionary housing', Architectural Design, September.

Price, C. (1971) 'Cedric Price Supplement No.4', Architectural Design, October.

Price, C. (1972) 'Cedric Price Supplement No.5', Architectural Design, January.

Unattributed (1971) 'East Pakistani refugees find a makeshift home in concrete pipes at a camp in Calcutta (Kolkata) - 1971', Old Indian Photos.

[edit] Further Reading

Anderson, C. (2016) 'GOOD LIFE NOW: Family, Leisure and Labour in Cedric Price's Housing Research, 1966-1973', ResearchGate, also in Footprint (2019).

de Campos, I. D. (2020) 'Architecture and Steel. Reflection and Analysis on the Use of Steel Structures (in Sight) as a Concept in the History of Architecture', ResearchGate.

Falagan, D. H. and Ziaiebigdeli, M. (2020) 'Parametric Architecture beyond Form—Klein and Price: Pioneers in Computing the Quality of Life in Housing', MDPI.

Fellows, N. (2019) 'Domestikit: A fantasia of the stories behind it', DreamHost (Legacy website).

Hardingham, S. (2016) 'A Forward-Minded Retrospective: Cedric Price Works – 1953-2003', the Architectural Association (AA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA).

Lucarelli, F. (2016) 'Cedric Price ‘Housing Research’ (1971) and the ‘Steel House’ (1967)', Socks.

--Archiblog 16:40, 24 May 2023 (BST)

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