Wish We Were Here and Cedric Price: Mental Notes

Wish We Were Here
Cedric Price: Mental Notes

Private view:
Friday 4 March 2011, 6.30-8.30pm

5–26 March 2011

Opening times:
Monday to Friday 10am–7pm, Saturday 10am–3pm

AA Front Members’ Room
Architectural Association
36 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3ES
Information: 020 7887 4145
www.aaschool.ac.uk

Wish We Were Here is a touring exhibition curated by Samantha Hardingham and Hans Ulrich Obrist. It is organized by the Public Occasion Agency and AA Exhibitions and is in part a re-staging of VENIC VENIC made for the 12th International Architecture Exhibition, ‘People Meet in Architecture’, Venice Biennale 2010 directed by Kazuyo Sejima and was made possible by the additional support of the Institute of the 21st Century: Bettina Korek, Karen Marta and Justin Conner.

This exhibition brings together three bodies of current research: a project for publication entitled “Cedric Price – Complete Works” by Samantha Hardingham, Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Conversation Series archive and an interactive online project conceived at the department for Exhibition Design and Curatorial Practice at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (HfG) by students Kilian Fabich and Stella-Sophie Seroglou, supervised by Wilfried Kühn, Armin Linke and Markus Miessen. In addition, and newly commissioned for this exhibition, is the remaking of a range of furniture designed by Cedric Price for the Robert Fraser Gallery, Duke Street, London (1961-66) and selected pieces of ephemera retrieved from the AA archive and The Cedric Price Estate, edited by the Public Occasion Agency…and last but by no means least… the first public tasting of the CPSavoury, as devised by chef, Fergus Henderson.

Philosopher, sir?’
‘An observer of human nature, sir’, said Mr Pickwick.
(Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers or The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club [1836-1837])

Cedric Price (1934–2003) was an architect, thinker and above all an Englishman of extraordinary generosity towards his subject. He had an independence of mind the like of which can only come from a fondness for humans and a fascination for human nature. For Price the moral and ethical principles implied in any design speculation are privileged over and above variations on the artefactual by-product. In this respect the role of the many rich collaborations over his lifetime, conversations and talks amongst audiences, engaging with the media as a means of initiating discussion, and the more personal dialogue presented in his notebooks were all critical in developing his design thinking on the themes of participation, anticipation, indeterminacy and delight. The films and drawings from Price’s personal notebooks that appear in the exhibition present Price doing what he did best over a period of 40 years—constantly challenging our understanding of what architecture might be, in discussions with students, colleagues, strangers and himself.