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The '''Inter-Action Centre''' was one of architect [[Cedric Price]]'s few realised projects. The community centre, sited at Talacre Public Open Space in Kentish Town, Camden, London was commissioned in 1964 by [[E. D. Berman|Ed Berman]] and Inter-Action Trust.<ref name="cca_fonds">{{cite web | title=Inter-Action Centre - Cedric Price fonds |url=https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/archives/380477/cedric-price-fonds/396839/projects/406080/inter-action-centre |website=Canadian Centre for Architecture |access-date=8 February 2023 |language=en}}</ref>
The '''Inter-Action Centre''' was one of architect [[Cedric Price]]'s few projects. The community centre, sited at Talacre Public Open Space in Kentish Town, Camden, London was commissioned in 1964 by [[E. D. Berman|Ed Berman]] and Inter-Action Trust.<ref name="cca_fonds">{{cite web |title=Inter-Action Centre - Cedric Price fonds |url=https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/archives/380477/cedric-price-fonds/396839/projects/406080/inter-action-centre |website=Canadian Centre for Architecture |= |=}}</ref>


Inter-Action Centre is notable in particular because it was one of the first buildings to make concrete the ideas of flexible architecture<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Achten |first=Henri |date=March 2019 |title=Interaction Narratives for Responsive Architecture |url=https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/9/3/66 |journal=Buildings |language=en |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=66 |doi=10.3390/buildings9030066 |issn=2075-5309 |quote=The Interaction Centre, Kentish Town, by architect Cedric Price, realized in 1971, was one of the first contemporary examples of kinetic and flexible architecture}}</ref> and impermanence<ref>{{Cite web |last=Williams |first=Rhiona |date=2018-09-05 |title=Cedric Price : Events in Time |url=https://rhionawilliams.com/2018/09/05/cedric-price-events-in-time/ |access-date=2023-02-16 |language=en}}</ref>. Price's body of work as a whole had a tremendous influence on the architecture profession,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Spatial Agency: Cedric Price |url=https://www.spatialagency.net/database/price |access-date=2023-02-16 |website=www.spatialagency.net |quote=an architect whose oeuvre, though mostly unbuilt, has had a marked influence on contemporary architecture}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2017-05-17 |title=Making architecture amusing |url=https://www.apollo-magazine.com/cedric-prices-mission-to-make-architecture-amusing/ |access-date=2023-02-16 |website=Apollo Magazine |language=en-US |quote=Cedric Price (1934–2003) has been described as the most influential architect you have never heard of}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Wilken |first=Rowan |title=Calculated uncertainty: computers, chance encounters, and 'community' in the work of Cedric Price |url=https://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/items/4f6ec058-7469-4b40-9cbe-1fbb4b62b073/1/ |access-date=2023-02-16 |website=researchbank.swinburne.edu.au |issn=1444-3775 |quote=Iconoclastic British architect and theorist Cedric Price is noted for the comparatively early incorporation of computing and other communications technologies into his designs, which he employed as part of an ongoing critique of the conventions of architectural form, and as part of his explorations of questions of mobility}}</ref> and the Inter-Action Centre helped realize the ambitions of his earlier unbuilt [[Fun Palace]] <ref>{{Cite news |last=Melvin |first=Jeremy |date=2003-08-15 |title=Cedric Price |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2003/aug/15/urbandesign.artsobituaries |access-date=2023-02-16 |issn=0261-3077 |quote=the Interaction Centre, built in London's Kentish Town in 1971, put some of these ideas into practice on a reduced scale}}</ref><ref name=":0" /> (which proposed the fusion of architecture and [[information technology]], entertainment and educational activities<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first=Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) |title=Inter-Action Centre - Cedric Price fonds |url=https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/archives/380477/cedric-price-fonds/396839/projects/406080/inter-action-centre |access-date=2023-02-16 |website=www.cca.qc.ca |language=en |quote=Cedric Price had been engaged by the concepts of flexible architecture, indeterminacy, impermanence, and the fusion of information technology, entertainment, and educational activities in earlier unrealized projects such as Fun Palace}}</ref>) and [[Potteries Thinkbelt]]<ref>{{cite web |title='Anti-building' for the future: the world of Cedric Price {{!}} St John's College, University of Cambridge |url=https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/anti-building-future-world-cedric-price |access-date=8 February 2023 |website=www.joh.cam.ac.uk |quote=The high-concept ideas behind the Fun Palace and the Potteries Thinkbelt found an outlet in one of the few structures of Price’s design that actually got built: the Inter-Action Centre, a unique multipurpose community centre in Kentish Town. This was something of a scaled-down and more static version of the Fun Palace, but was still extendable and flexible. The Inter-Action Centre illustrates Price’s insistence that buildings should not be monumental but mutable. He believed that buildings and institutions should not be preserved forever, but rather that obsolescence and demolition were a natural part of any building’s “life cycle”.}}</ref>. It was constructed around an open framework into which modular, pre-fabricated elements could be inserted and removed according to need.<ref>{{cite web |title=InterAction Project |url=https://architectuul.com/architecture/interaction-project |access-date=8 February 2023 |website=Architectuul |quote=The InterAction Centre building constituted an open framework into which modular, pre-fabricated elements can be inserted and removed according to need}}</ref> It was essentially a building that could be reconfigured over time as occupants requirements evolved.
Under construction at the same time as the [[Centre Pompidou]], as a piece of architecture, the Inter-Action Centre crystalised much of Price's conceptual work on projects such as [[Fun Palace]] and [[Potteries Thinkbelt]]<ref>{{cite web |title='Anti-building' for the future: the world of Cedric Price {{!}} St John's College, University of Cambridge |url=https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/anti-building-future-world-cedric-price |website=www.joh.cam.ac.uk |access-date=8 February 2023}}</ref>, constructed around an open framework into which modular, pre-fabricated elements could be inserted and removed according to need.<ref>{{cite web |title=InterAction Project |url=https://architectuul.com/architecture/interaction-project |website=Architectuul |access-date=8 February 2023}}</ref> It was essentially a building that could be reconfigured over time as occupants requirements evolved.

Inter-Action Centre is notable in particular because it was one of the first buildings to make concrete the ideas of flexible architecture and impermanence, fusing [[information technology]]{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}<!-- The cited CCA source says nothing about the building being the first to do this or that, and nothing about information technology. --> and urban construction with entertainment and educational activities.<ref name="cca_fonds" /> Price's body of work as a whole had a tremendous influence on the architecture profession,{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}<!-- The cited CCA source doesn't say this. --> and the Inter-Action Centre, one of his few realized schemes, also represented the conjunction of his approach to both [[systems theory]]{{Vague|date=February 2023}}<!-- His approach to both systems theory and what? --> as well as the impact of community activism.<ref>{{cite web |first1=Sol | last1=Pérez Martínez |title=In absence of . . . alternative narratives |url=https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/71511/in-absence-ofjust-stories |website=Canadian Centre for Architecture |access-date=10 February 2023 |language=en}}</ref>


Often compared to [[Centre Pompidou]] and other high-tech buildings of the time, the Inter-Action Centre differed in being explicitly designed around a democratic approach to architecture.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bonfante |first1=Francesca |title=The 'Machines' of knowledge: Cedric Price's Topicality |journal=International Journal of Architecture and Urban Studies |date=2021 |volume=6 |pages=124-133 |url=https://re.public.polimi.it/bitstream/11311/1201545/1/Articolo%20Bonfante.pdf |access-date=10 February 2023}}</ref>
Often compared to [[Centre Pompidou]] and other high-tech buildings of the time, the Inter-Action Centre differed in being explicitly designed around a democratic approach to architecture.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bonfante |first1=Francesca |title=The 'Machines' of knowledge: Cedric Price's Topicality |journal=International Journal of Architecture and Urban Studies |date=2021 |volume=6 |pages=124-133 |url=https://re.public.polimi.it/bitstream/11311/1201545/1/Articolo%20Bonfante.pdf |access-date=10 February 2023}}</ref>


Price had been working with, and was influenced by, cybernetician [[Gordon Pask]] and used the Inter-Action Centre as way to present an architectural approach to second-order [[cybernetics]] and was one of the earliest buildings to demonstrate the changing role of the architect in contemporary society, a role more about designing systems than objects, and one in which occupants' interactions with each other, and the structure, was as important as the physical fabric.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Herdt |first1=Tanja |title=From Cybernetics to an Architecture of Ecology: Cedric Price’s Inter-Action Centre |journal=Footprint |date=29 June 2021 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=45–62 |doi=10.7480/footprint.15.1.4946 |url=https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/4946 |access-date=10 February 2023 |language=en |issn=1875-1490}}</ref> The Inter-Action Centre was architectural evidence that Price's radical and utopian agenda could be materialized in a built form with a clear social agenda,<ref name="araguez">{{cite journal |last1=Aragüez |first1=Marcela |title=Building Calculated Uncertainty: Cedric Price’s Interaction Centre |journal=arq: Architectural Research Quarterly |date=June 2021 |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=108–124 |doi=10.1017/S1359135521000233 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/arq-architectural-research-quarterly/article/abs/building-calculated-uncertainty-cedric-prices-interaction-centre/718F5BF809B24CA7677A401417AA2A55 |access-date=10 February 2023 |language=en |issn=1359-1355}}</ref> though there is a differing viewpoint that the building showed that his goals were not quite realizable in the real world.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Xu |first1=Grace |title=The Contradictions of Containing the Infinite in the Fun Palace |date=2021 |doi=10.26153/tsw/38072 |url=https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/111167 |access-date=10 February 2023}}</ref>
Price had been working with, and was influenced by, cybernetician [[Gordon Pask]] and used the Inter-Action Centre as way to present an architectural approach to second-order [[cybernetics]]<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Herdt |first1=Tanja |title=From Cybernetics to an Architecture of Ecology: Cedric Price’s Inter-Action Centre |journal=Footprint |date=29 June 2021 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=45–62 |doi=10.7480/footprint.15.1.4946 |url=https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/4946 |access-date=10 February 2023 |language=en |issn=1875-1490}}</ref> The Inter-Action Centre was architectural evidence that Price's radical and utopian agenda could be materialized in a built form with a clear social agenda,<ref name="araguez">{{cite journal |last1=Aragüez |first1=Marcela |title=Building Calculated Uncertainty: Cedric Price’s Interaction Centre |journal=arq: Architectural Research Quarterly |date=June 2021 |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=108–124 |doi=10.1017/S1359135521000233 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/arq-architectural-research-quarterly/article/abs/building-calculated-uncertainty-cedric-prices-interaction-centre/718F5BF809B24CA7677A401417AA2A55 |access-date=10 February 2023 |language=en |issn=1359-1355}}</ref> though there is a differing viewpoint that the building showed that his goals were not quite realizable in the real world.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Xu |first1=Grace |title=The Contradictions of Containing the Infinite in the Fun Palace |date=2021 |doi=10.26153/tsw/38072 |url=https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/111167 |access-date=10 February 2023}}</ref>


Price himself persuaded [[English Heritage]] not to list the building and supported its demolition in 2003<ref>{{cite web |last1=Murphy |first1=Douglas |title=Cedric Price (1934–2003) |url=https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations/cedric-price-1934-2003 |website=Architectural Review |access-date=8 February 2023 |language=en |date=5 January 2018}}</ref> because he believed it had fulfilled its purpose as a temporary commodity with a short lifespan.<ref name="araguez" />
Price himself persuaded [[English Heritage]] not to list the building and supported its demolition in 2003<ref>{{cite web |last1=Murphy |first1=Douglas |title=Cedric Price (1934–2003) |url=https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations/cedric-price-1934-2003 |website=Architectural Review |access-date=8 February 2023 |language=en |date=5 January 2018}}</ref> because he believed it had fulfilled its purpose as a temporary commodity with a short lifespan.<ref name="araguez" />

Revision as of 11:45, 16 February 2023

  • Comment: This looks promising. I was about to accept it, but thought I'd clear up syntax errors in the CCA references first. While looking at the two CCA sources, I realized that they did not provide the information that this draft implies that they provide. An assertion must be backed up by a source that doesn't merely say something that's more or less compatible with the assertion: the source must present the facts in the assertion. I wish this draft the best (I'm sure that its subject merits an article); but before accepting this draft, any reviewer should check that the cited sources actually say what the draft implies that they say. (NB I didn't even glance at any of the cited sources other than the pair from CCA.) Hoary (talk) 23:33, 10 February 2023 (UTC) Slightly reworded Hoary (talk) 04:48, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The Inter-Action Centre was one of architect Cedric Price's few realized projects[1][2]. The community centre, sited at Talacre Public Open Space in Kentish Town, Camden, London was commissioned in 1964 by Ed Berman and Inter-Action Trust.[3]

Inter-Action Centre is notable in particular because it was one of the first buildings to make concrete the ideas of flexible architecture[4] and impermanence[5]. Price's body of work as a whole had a tremendous influence on the architecture profession,[6][7][8] and the Inter-Action Centre helped realize the ambitions of his earlier unbuilt Fun Palace [9][2] (which proposed the fusion of architecture and information technology, entertainment and educational activities[10]) and Potteries Thinkbelt[11]. It was constructed around an open framework into which modular, pre-fabricated elements could be inserted and removed according to need.[12] It was essentially a building that could be reconfigured over time as occupants requirements evolved.

Often compared to Centre Pompidou and other high-tech buildings of the time, the Inter-Action Centre differed in being explicitly designed around a democratic approach to architecture.[13]

Price had been working with, and was influenced by, cybernetician Gordon Pask and used the Inter-Action Centre as way to present an architectural approach to second-order cybernetics[14]. The Inter-Action Centre was architectural evidence that Price's radical and utopian agenda could be materialized in a built form with a clear social agenda,[15] though there is a differing viewpoint that the building showed that his goals were not quite realizable in the real world.[16][17]

Price himself persuaded English Heritage not to list the building and supported its demolition in 2003[18] because he believed it had fulfilled its purpose as a temporary commodity with a short lifespan.[15]

Further reading

References

  1. ^ Herdt, Tanja (2021-06-29). "From Cybernetics to an Architecture of Ecology: Cedric Price's Inter-Action Centre". FOOTPRINT. 15 (1): 45–62. doi:10.7480/footprint.15.1.4946. ISSN 1875-1490. the Inter-Action Centre is one of the very few projects where the architect put these ideas into practice
  2. ^ a b Pérez Martínez, Sol. "In absence of...alternative narratives". www.cca.qc.ca. Retrieved 2023-02-16. Its main legacy is as one of the only built proof of Price's ideas... press overshadowed other narratives of the Inter-Action Centre by describing the project as "Fun Palace Mark II", a built smaller-scale version of Price's vastly referenced project, Fun Palace
  3. ^ "Inter-Action Centre - Cedric Price fonds". Canadian Centre for Architecture. Retrieved 8 February 2023. a completed project for a community centre commissioned by Ed Berman and the Inter-Action Trust, for a disused site at Talacre Public Open Space in Kentish Town, Camden, London
  4. ^ Achten, Henri (March 2019). "Interaction Narratives for Responsive Architecture". Buildings. 9 (3): 66. doi:10.3390/buildings9030066. ISSN 2075-5309. The Interaction Centre, Kentish Town, by architect Cedric Price, realized in 1971, was one of the first contemporary examples of kinetic and flexible architecture{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  5. ^ Williams, Rhiona (2018-09-05). "Cedric Price : Events in Time". Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  6. ^ "Spatial Agency: Cedric Price". www.spatialagency.net. Retrieved 2023-02-16. an architect whose oeuvre, though mostly unbuilt, has had a marked influence on contemporary architecture
  7. ^ "Making architecture amusing". Apollo Magazine. 2017-05-17. Retrieved 2023-02-16. Cedric Price (1934–2003) has been described as the most influential architect you have never heard of
  8. ^ Wilken, Rowan. "Calculated uncertainty: computers, chance encounters, and 'community' in the work of Cedric Price". researchbank.swinburne.edu.au. ISSN 1444-3775. Retrieved 2023-02-16. Iconoclastic British architect and theorist Cedric Price is noted for the comparatively early incorporation of computing and other communications technologies into his designs, which he employed as part of an ongoing critique of the conventions of architectural form, and as part of his explorations of questions of mobility
  9. ^ Melvin, Jeremy (2003-08-15). "Cedric Price". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-02-16. the Interaction Centre, built in London's Kentish Town in 1971, put some of these ideas into practice on a reduced scale
  10. ^ "Inter-Action Centre - Cedric Price fonds". www.cca.qc.ca. Retrieved 2023-02-16. Cedric Price had been engaged by the concepts of flexible architecture, indeterminacy, impermanence, and the fusion of information technology, entertainment, and educational activities in earlier unrealized projects such as Fun Palace {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help)
  11. ^ "'Anti-building' for the future: the world of Cedric Price | St John's College, University of Cambridge". www.joh.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 February 2023. The high-concept ideas behind the Fun Palace and the Potteries Thinkbelt found an outlet in one of the few structures of Price's design that actually got built: the Inter-Action Centre, a unique multipurpose community centre in Kentish Town. This was something of a scaled-down and more static version of the Fun Palace, but was still extendable and flexible. The Inter-Action Centre illustrates Price's insistence that buildings should not be monumental but mutable. He believed that buildings and institutions should not be preserved forever, but rather that obsolescence and demolition were a natural part of any building's "life cycle".
  12. ^ "InterAction Project". Architectuul. Retrieved 8 February 2023. The InterAction Centre building constituted an open framework into which modular, pre-fabricated elements can be inserted and removed according to need
  13. ^ Bonfante, Francesca (2021). "The 'Machines' of knowledge: Cedric Price's Topicality" (PDF). International Journal of Architecture and Urban Studies. 6: 124–133. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  14. ^ Herdt, Tanja (29 June 2021). "From Cybernetics to an Architecture of Ecology: Cedric Price's Inter-Action Centre". Footprint. 15 (1): 45–62. doi:10.7480/footprint.15.1.4946. ISSN 1875-1490. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  15. ^ a b Aragüez, Marcela (June 2021). "Building Calculated Uncertainty: Cedric Price's Interaction Centre". arq: Architectural Research Quarterly. 25 (2): 108–124. doi:10.1017/S1359135521000233. ISSN 1359-1355. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  16. ^ Xu, Grace (2021). "The Contradictions of Containing the Infinite in the Fun Palace". doi:10.26153/tsw/38072. Retrieved 10 February 2023. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. ^ Xu, Grace (2021). "The Contradictions of Containing the Infinite in the Fun Palace". University of Texas at Austin - Student Works. doi:10.26153/tsw/38072. his ideas of radical indeterminacy and constant change inevitably come with contradictions that prevent the total realization of his ideals
  18. ^ Murphy, Douglas (5 January 2018). "Cedric Price (1934–2003)". Architectural Review. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
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