Dialogic Criticism. Cedric Price’s Supplements, Reviews and Columns 1960–1999

Abstract

For the radical British architect Cedric Price (1934–2003), architecture was above all a social art. Price considered architecture’s essential role in society to be that of creating “continuous dialogue”. This idea of architecture as a social process could equally apply to Price’s architectural discourse. As a public intellectual and polemicist, Price sought not only to reach a broader audience but also to stimulate a sense of societal awareness and public debate within the architectural profession. This article focuses on Price’s activity as a critic with the aim of defining some possible alternatives in architectural criticism’s relationship to public debate. More specifically, it makes a case for a “dialogic” approach to criticism based on Price’s creative experiments in mass media, journalism and writing.