Cedric Price

Cedric Price FRIBA (11 September 1934 – 10 August 2003) was an English architect and influential teacher and writer on architecture.

Early life and education The son of the architect A.G. Price, who worked with Harry Weedon, Price was born in Stone, Staffordshire. He studied architecture at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1955, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London, where he encountered and was influenced by the modernist architect and urban planner Arthur Korn. From 1958 to 1964 he taught part-time at the AA and at the Council of Industrial Design. He later founded Polyark, an architectural schools network.

Career After graduating, Price worked briefly for Erno Goldfinger, Denys Lasdun, the partnership of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, and applied unsuccessfully for a post at London County Council, working briefly as a professional illustrator before starting his own practice in 1960. He later also worked with Buckminster Fuller on the Claverton Dome.

One of his more notable projects was the East London Fun Palace (1961), developed in association with theatrical director Joan Littlewood and cybernetician Gordon Pask.

In 1969, with planner Sir Peter Hall and the editor of New Society magazine Paul Barker, he published Non-plan, a work challenging planning orthodoxy.

In 1984, Price proposed the redevelopment of London's South Bank, and foresaw the London Eye by suggesting that a giant Ferris wheel should be constructed by the River Thames.

Personal life and death Price was the partner of the actress Eleanor Bron. They had no children.

Price died in London, aged 68, in 2003.