ABSTRACT
Missing from the drawings of many of the architects included in this book are people. This might seem at first to be a rather trite observation, but it is notable when people do appear in axonometric drawings, and they are present in abundance in the drawings of Cedric Price.
Price is best known for his Fun Palace and Potteries Thinkbelt projects and similar utopian re-imaginings of how we live and work. His architecture was often utilitarian, prefabricated, and formally simple. Despite this, his work is acknowledged to have a sense of mischief and a socially progressive edge. Much of his work remains unbuilt, propositional, and speculative—reimagining social structures as well as architectural ones, and as such, most exist as paper projects.
People are present in these drawings. Occupying space rather than appreciating it as sculptural and perfect, Price gives people their place and shows us that these spaces must be inhabited to make sense.
Conventional wisdom denies this in parallel projection, whilst orthographic drawings are so often cluttered with cut-and-paste figures from drawing catalogues. This gives us a clue as to the regard for axonometric and isometric as technical drawings: explorations of structure and detail. Price acknowledges this and uses the drawings in this way, having an exposed-structure aesthetic in his work. What is most notable, then, is that Price is in agreement with this utility for technical details, but he still cannot conceptualise this without people in it. As such, his drawings demonstrate a belief that there should be no separation between technological and engineering solutions and the social conscience of architecture.
