This Charming Man
An evening with Cedric Price

In the course of even the most interesting evening lecture, there often comes a point for me when the context begins to occlude the subject matter. It starts with the creeping suspicion that the whole thing is a little too cosy, a preaching to the too easily converted, a dry exercise in self-promotion or, at least, promotion of the establishment. A pernicious worm this, and particularly in academic circles where audiences are specialised and, one suspects, all too willing to play the game.

Cedric Price�s address at the UCD School of Architecture on December 8th last was sharp, idiosyncratic, tendentious and, in the light of the above, enormously refreshing. Through an irascible abandonment of etiquette, he cheerfully demonstrated the true spirit of manners, that is the attempt to be genuinely inclusive, to respond with heart to one�s listeners, to berate or praise them but at least to acknowledge their vital spark, their difference. Nerve was called for from the students and the integrity of tuition was questioned. Fighting words, in a school, and yet, well said; where is the value of education without scepticism?

�Words�, we were told, �are beautiful, malleable things�. Firmness, commodity and delight became safety, use and fun. His charting of the phases of use through misuse, abuse and disuse to refuse introduced an insightful reflection on the dimension of time in architecture and a salutary one, given the current reconstruction / destruction of our city. Our old buildings are not longer valued enough to be allowed to live out their cycle of use and many of our new ones are not free enough to address the ever more diverse needs of their occupants. Where are the architectural manners in this, where the dignity of age, the integrity of the true designer�s intent? The �calculated incompleteness of design� which Cedric Price recommends is, perhaps, a way of expressing this essential engagement with humanity whereby the occupant of a building is encouraged to make it his own and direct its history.

How lovely to be enjoined to �design with a light heart�. The Fun Palace comes to mind - a building whose success rests upon its willingness toengage with disorder rather than to willfully impose an order of its own. Again it is a question of acknowledgement, of recognising the value of responding to the human pulse and not chastening it.

The figure who ironically becomes the establishment by his very stand against it is familiar to us. In a letter to the Architectural Journal Cedric Price once thanked a critic of his Fun Palace �from the bottom of my arse�. He is now widely respected by the architectural establishment, perhaps partially as a consequence of such acts. It may be naive of me not to consider his address, as I know others have done, a display of showmanship, pure spectacle, indulgent and false. I prefer to accept it, however, in good faith; the product of a youthful heart which ardently hopes that a new generation of architects might carry out of their schools not the desire to seek approval or to be hopelessly deferential but the will to usefully question and build with conviction. To do otherwise would be bad manners.

Kevin Donovan is a second-year student at UCD School of Architecture