Cedric Price. Page from a draft of promotional literature for Fun Palace with questionnaire, 1963. Black pencil, graphite and black, blue and red ink on wove paper, 27.5 x 23.2 cm. DR1995:0188:525:002:001:017:001. Cedric Price fonds, Collection Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal

Conversation

10 September 2015, 6:00 pm 

Shaughnessy House
Presented in English

As part of the first phase of the CCA’s Multidisciplinary Research Program, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, four scholars discuss their ongoing research into cultural transformation and architecture in postwar Britain:

''This collaborative research project brings together a number of historical and theoretical case studies of postwar British culture that aim to engage with design and the production of the built environment as sites of conflict, problematizing the historiography of consensus politics in the Welfare State. The purpose of the project is not to give an account of the cultural context in which architecture was produced and by which we can frame our understanding of architecture, but instead, to treat architecture as a ‘thing to think with’: as historical and material practices and discourses that allow us to illuminate the contradictions and possibilities for social change in the period and for the present.

The conversation will revisit the uncertainties and complexities of this history, aiming to demonstrate the instrumental, even tactical role of design, architecture and planning in the formation of culture and its institutions.'' 

—Nick Beech, Timothy Ivison, Simon Sadler and Ben Sweeting

Nick Beech (Queen Mary University of London), Timothy Ivison (independent scholar), Simon Sadler (University of California Davis) and Ben Sweeting (University of Brighton), together with Murray Fraser (The Bartlett, UCL) are 2014–2016 Mellon Researchers at the CCA.

Lee Stickells (University of Sydney), 2015 Visiting Scholar, and Maristella Casciato, Associate Director, Research will act as respondents.

> via cca.qc.ca/en