Cedric Price’s Generator

Not much has been published about Cedric Price’s Generator project. In fact, not much at all has been published about (or by) Price (1934-2003), an architect who understood architecture as that which set the conditions for interaction, as opposed to imposing formal will on a place. He was famous for statements like, “Technology is the answer… but what was the question?” and for suggesting that architecture might not be the right solution to a problem (maybe you don’t need a new house. Maybe you need to leave your wife, he suggested). He is best known for two unbuilt projects: the Fun Palace (1963-67), a collaboration with radical theater director Joan Littlewood, and the Potteries Thinkbelt, a mobile university on rails (1965).  Though he avoided personal technology in his office–the fax didn’t have paper; the phone was only answered during strict hours–his ideas presaged concepts we’re familiar with today, including the Internet and ubiquitous computing.

Generator (1976-79, unbuilt), sought to create conditions for shifting, changing personal interaction in a reconfigurable and responsive architectural project. It was to serve as a retreat and activity center for small groups of visitors (1 to 100) to the White Oak Plantation on the coastal Georgia-Florida border. Designed for Howard Gilman, the CEO of the Gilman Paper Company and a generous arts patron [1], it followed this open-ended brief:

A building which will not contradict, but enhance, the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere; has to be accessible to the public as well as to private guests; has to create a feeling of seclusion conducive to creative impulses, yet … accommodate audiences; has to respect the wildness of the environment while accommodating a grand piano; has to respect the continuity of the history of the place while being innovative.[2]

Price developed a scheme of 150 12′ by 12′ recombinable, mobile cubes
with off-the-shelf infill panels, glazing and sliding glass doors;
catwalks; screens and boardwalks, all of which could be moved by mobile
crane as desired by users to support whatever activities they had in
mind, whether public or private, serious or banal.

In order to determine the initial arrangements–menus, as he called them–Price used programmatic research tools: activity questionnaires filled out by Generator’s potential users, who then mapped these against requirements for infrastructure, space, quiet or privacy. He used the small, handheld Three Peg Game to determine the original layout for Generator. 
Its rules were simple: take turns with the other player in forming a line of three same-colored pegs (a “mill”), whether vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The winner is declared when the opponent cannot make a move. “It is usual to play a series of games until one player has a two game lead when he is considered to have won outright,” the rules note. From here, in combination with the programmatic exercises, he created what he called menus: arrangements of Generator’s cubes, screens and paths that would engage people in unexpected interactions with each other and with Generator as they used it.

Price was particularly interested in the idea that Generator would surprise its users (or for that matter, at least himself). In collaboration with programmer-architects John and Julia Frazer, Generator became “intelligent” with the addition of computer programs and embedded sensors. Each element of Generator would be outfitted with an independent microchip. The sensors would interact with four computer programs that performed a variety of tasks, including keeping inventory, aiding Generator’s users to design different layouts, and most powerfully and importantly, getting bored. The boredom routine would run if people did not request changes of Generator frequently enough, or if the parts were not aptly used. It would draw up new plans for Generator, which would be handed off to the social elements of the project.

The social elements of Generator acknowledged that a retreat site composed of mobile, responsive components would prove unfamiliar to visitors without human facilitation. Thus, Price created two roles, “Polariser” and “Factor,” to catalyze on-site interpersonal dynamics and logistical requirements. Polariser would encourage people to use Generator in novel ways and facilitate their interactions with each other; Factor would operationalize the desires of Generator’s users onsite, operating the mobile crane to suit the menu and handling other human to site requirements. Polariser was Barbara Jakobson, a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art and the person who introduced Price to Gilman. Factor was Wally Prince, the operations manager for the White Oak Plantation.

Like many of Price’s projects, Generator was never built. After nearly three years of design, the project was stymied by financial turmoil and a feud within the family-run Gilman Paper Company. Moreover, inasmuch as the project served to benefit employees of the company, the workforce did not support the project: the maintenance requirements were too great. Gilman was unable to clear the hurdle and had to abandon the project. John Frazer continued to hope that the project would be revived, suggesting a new start in 1989, again in 1995, and shortly before Price’s death in 2003.

Technologically speaking, it must be said that Generator was a notably prescient project. It represents the nexus of architecture and nascent ubiquitous computing. The technical ideas behind Price and the Frazers’ collaboration on Generator have still not been largely realized. Yet all of the groundwork was in place for Generator–its flexible program and its elements–before the sensors and programs were ever discussed. The programs were useful for the ways they could unleash unexpected interactions, but without the investigations into the connection of the social and the site and the underlying concepts, the idea would not have endured–an important precept for designers and architects working at the intersection of pervasive computing and design.

This entry
derives from my master’s thesis, for which I used the Canadian Centre
for Architecture Cedric Price Archive in Montreal. The images of the project derive from the archive; individual images have the archival source information.

[1] Gilman’s
art patronage is perhaps his greatest legacy and includes the highly
regarded Howard Gilman Photography Collection, now at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the Howard Gilman Visionary Architectural Drawing
Collection at the Museum of Modern Art. Pierre Apraxine curated both
collections. Gilman supported Rudolf Nureyev and sponsored Mikhail
Baryshnikov when he defected to the West. The White Oak Plantation
would become the site of the White Oak Dance Project, founded by
Baryshnikov and Mark Morris, in 1990. It is still used for dance
workshops and performances.

[2] Paola Antonelli, “Interview with Pierre Apraxine,” in The Changing of the Avant-Garde: Visionary Architectural Drawings from the Howard Gilman Collection, ed. Terence Riley (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 150.