archive:architecture:fawood [re.search.notes]

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Will Price

<p>More image/text mash ups.</p>

<p><img src="http://static.flickr.com/31/93984254_3aac383187.jpg"></p>

<blockquote>
'...seems to admit more affinity with construction photos than with images of finished buildings ... divisions haven't yet been filled in ... leaves openings for life to develop and lets the architect suggest an unpredictable future ... The design remains an idea, or a net in which various bits have got lodged like bugs in the radiator grille of a car. Like these insects, the gelled or completed elements of the structure are significant as clues to a process, signs of activity which buildings can't entirely contain. So this work is like a machine not in its strict logic but in its absence of extraneous baggage and its unprogrammatic linkages...'
</blockquote>

<p><strong>Image:</strong> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,1383921,00.html">Fawood Children's Centre</a> by Alsop and Partners (photo credit - <a href="http://www.europaconcorsi.com/db/pub/architecture.php?id_scheda=6008&idimg=45386">Alan Lai</a>)</p>

<p><strong>Words:</strong> Robert Harbison describing Cedric Price's Interaction Centre in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262581701">Thirteen Ways: Theoretical Investigations in Architecture</a></em>.</p>

<hr>

I <a href="http://rob.annable.co.uk/journal.cgi/architecture/kiss">attended an Alsop lecture last year</a> and I remember very clearly one of the first things that struck me as he got up to speak. As he headed towards the laptop/rostrum, glass of red wine in hand, before a single image had been shown, I thought to myself <em>'This is what it must have been like to see Cedric Price lecture'</em>.

Moments later he started the lecture by talking about the time he spent working with Cedric Price. Perhaps I was just sub-consciously remembering that connection, but for a moment it seemed like Price was with us again for the evening.

Piers Gough and the rest of the judging panel were wrong. The Fawood Children's Centre should have won <a href="http://www.architecture.com/go/Architecture/Also/Awards_2006.html">last year's Stirling Prize</a>.