The Potteries Think Belt CEDRIC PRICE

T he Potteries
T hinkbelt
The Fun Palace helped to establish Cedric Price as one of Britain's

brightest and most innovative young architects. Although most of
the early Fun Palace publicity largely focused on Joan Littlewood,
this was because at the outset of the project in 1961, he was
relatively unknown. By the time of the demise of the Fun Palace
project, certain members of the press had begun to refer to him as
"Mr Cedric Price, known for his work on the planned South London
Fun Palace".1 By 1966, through his many meetings and contacts
while working on the Fun Palace, Price had become well-known
and respected within the British architectural avant-garde, and the
powerful elite in both government and society.
Price's experience with the Fun Palace project, and especially his
collaboration with Littlewood and a small army of consultants, also
served to broaden his understanding of the scope of architecture
and what it might accomplish on a larger social scale. His earlier
designs had utilised some of the principles of interchangeability
and indeterminacy that came to characterise the Fun Palace, but
most of these early works, such as the Mostyn Bar or the London
Aviary, were relatively modest in both scope and scale. Moreover,
none had engaged the larger ethical, social, and political issues
he encountered in the Fun Palace. Certainly his close friendship
with Littlewood had done a great deal to expand his already keen
sensitivity to social and political issues. Her lifelong commitment
to theatre as social and political catalyst paralleled Price's own
growing sense of architecture as a social means rather than a
formal, and perhaps even architectural, end in itself. Price had
equally come to share Buckminster Fuller's broad vision of the
architect as world planner and social engineer. Pulitzer Prize
winner, architecture critic Allan Temko, wrote to him: "It always
seemed to me that you had the soundest ideas concerning large
scale planning of any architect I met in England, and I wonder if
someone has given you a crack at some big problems ."2
Just as the Fun Palace began to face growing opposition in
London, Price found his chance to address some of the biggest
problems facing Britain with his next project, the Potteries
Thinkbelt. Price was, of course, not the only architect at the time
to be thinking big. However, unlike the improbable and impractical
(but intriguing) schemes that Archigram or Nieuwenhuys were
proposing for walking cities or cities in the air, Price's large-scale
proposals were eminently practicable and well within the range of
the possible. Price carefully researched and designed every aspect
of the Potteries Thinkbelt, by far his grandest scheme, and it could
easily have been built had the political will and courage existed to
pursue the project.
Where the Fun Palace was a testing ground for Price's ideas, the
Potteries Thinkbelt marked a maturation of his understanding of
architecture. Here, he fully mobilised his theories of architectural
indeterminacy to address the most critical issues facing Britain at
the time. There are clearly similarities between the two projects,
especially with regard to their incorporation of cybernetically
194 The Architecture of Cedric Price
oontrolled interaction and strong social objectives. Like the Fun

I 111lace, the Potteries Thinkbelt was not an expressive or symbolic
I 111llding, but an interactive device in which the subject could
1 1 ndergo a transformation. In the case of the Fun Palace, this was
nn escape from everyday routine into self-discovery and individual
l\1lfilment. At the Potteries Thinkbelt, the transformation would
l>o more explicitly educational, and aimed at equipping subjects
with specific and practical knowledge. In the same way that
I.he Fun Palace posed alternatives to institutionalised culture
I n the Welfare State, so the Potteries Thinkbelt challenged
I nstitutionalised education in post-war Britain.
Rooted in the socialist ideologies of the Welfare State, the
1 1rchitecture of the Potteries Thinkbelt suggested visionary
models for housing, education, industry, and architecture for
post-imperial, post-industrial England. The project called for the
oonversion of a vast wasteland of Britain's once-thriving industrial
heartland into a 174 square kilometre High-Tech think-tank.
Price's proposal recuperated derelict industrial sites and railways
u.s the basic infrastructure for a new school where unemployed
British workers could study and practice science and technology,
nubjects largely ignored by the English universities at the time.
Both the Fun Palace and Potteries Thinkbelt exhibit Price's
npproach of a responsive, anticipatory architecture, adaptable
Lo the varying needs and desires of the individual and of society.
Price felt that since Britain's future could not be predicted, the
lbrms and programmes of the Fun Palace and Potteries Thinkbelt
had to be continuously adaptable, acknowledging change and
I ndeterminacy in a continuously evolving process. The Thinkbelt
was not a building or a monument, but an interactive network.
like the Fun Palace, its design was rooted in the cybernetic and
game theory principles of Norbert Wiener and John van Neumann.
I ts constantly changing form was both controlled by and derived
from emergent computer and information technologies. This
technologically-oriented architecture was Price's alternative to the
New Empiricist emphasis on the picturesque and English tradition,
md the Independent Group's preoccupation with the ad hoc
Imagery and patterns of everyday culture.
The planning of the Potteries Thinkbelt coincided with Britain's
disastrous 'Brain Drain' era of the 1960s, when lack of technical
oducation and employment opportunities drove thousands of
British scientists and engineers to emigrate to Europe and North
America. Between 1951 and 1965, the need for semi-skille d
and unskilled workers in Britain steadily decreased, while the
demand for skilled technicians rose sharply. 3 However, British
schools and colleges failed to provide adequate technical training
tor new workers and technologists. Despite the promises of
post-war educational reform, higher education in Britain was
still largely associated with prestige, high social class, and the
classics. Pure science and research were privileged over technical
oducation and applied science, even in the more populist 'redbrick'
The Potteries Thlnkbelt 195
universities that sprang up in the post-war years. British industry

also failed to keep pace with global trends towards automation and
computerisation, and were slow to adopt new technologies. While
the British government poured millions of pounds into efforts to
revive obsolete industries, Price envisioned a wholesale conversion
of England's rusting infrastructure into an industry of technical
education and scientific research focusing on practical applications.
He coined the term 'Thinkbelt' to describe the regional scale of
the project and its educational orientation. Price hoped that the
Potteries Thinkbelt would help to break down the traditional wall
between pure and applied science and technology, lure scientists
and technologists back to Britain, and help to situate the nation at
the forefront of advanced technologies.4
During the development of the project, there was no large cadre
of experts, consultants, and volunteers, as there had been for
the Fun Palace. Price designed the Thinkbelt more or less single
handedly, although his long-time architectural assistant Stephen
Mullin helped produce the final drawings. However, Price did
refine his ideas for the project by discussion and correspondence
with a number of people. By this time, he had become close friends
with Littlewood, and while she did not collaborate with him on the
Thinkbelt, she did offer advice. Reyner Banham's doctoral advisor,
Nikolaus Pevsner, also made suggestions and comments on the
project proposal.
Post-war Britain faced crises that encompassed national and
global identity, social and class structures, and the future of British
industry and its economy. One of the most urgent debates in Britain
in the early 1960s concerned how to prepare for the new windfall
of leisure time that was expected to affect the working classes.
Assuming a continued commitment to full employment (a fair
assumption given the original aims of the Welfare State), many
experts concluded that increased workplace automation would lead
to shorter working hours and more free time for workers. 5 But they
also realised that automation and new technologies of production
would also require new kinds of worker, better educated and more
flexible than their forerunners of a century earlier.
Ideas about how best to use the new free time specifically for
the purposes of education had provided the primary inspiration
for the Fun Palace. Far from being a carnival of spectacle and
mindless diversion, Littlewood and Price had intended the Fun
Palace to empower and enhance the lives of those most likely to
be disenfranchised and out of work due to the transformations in
the post-war British economy. In the Fun Palace, the word 'fun'
was essentially a trope for new creative and constructive uses of
free time, designed to educate and prepare the average person for
success in the rapidly changing social, economic, and technological
landscapes of Britain. For, although the project emphasised leisure
and recreation, its principle function was to provide self-guided
educational opportunities suited to the needs and abilities of the
individual. As an alternative educational model, the Fun Palace
1 10Hed a significant challenge not only to traditional culture, but

the highly regimented and elitist British system of education
1.t 1at had existed for centuries. With the Potteries Thinkbelt,
I '1lce presented an even more radical and visionary educational
nlternative for the nation.
Britain's problems of unemployment and industrial decline
I n the 1960s were exacerbated by a failure to keep pace with
1 m increasingly competitive and technologically sophisticated
world market. Having won two world wars, Britain was suffering
defeat on the industrial battlefield. The British government had
l l'onically developed a conservatively 'anti-enterprise' culture that
1 1ermeated business and education, and resisted technological
rnodernisation and industrial transformation.6
Between 1 9 51 and 1964, Britain's economy grew two or three
per cent annually-far slower than the rest of the developed world.
During the same period, industrial growth occurred three times
faster in France than in Britain, four times faster in Germany,
nnd ten times faster in Japan, while Britain's share of the world
market was reduced by half.7 Between 1951 and 1965, with the
decrease in semi-skilled and unskilled workers and the demand
fbr skilled technicians rising, British schools and colleges were
nevertheless unable to provide the adequate technical education
t.o train new workers and technologists.
The Labour government of the early post-war years tended to
view technical schools with suspicion and regarded traditional
grammar schools as the preferred means of rapid social
advancement for their working class constituents. Subsequent
Conservative governments emphasised working class education
as an economic ladder towards the middle class, rather than as
a means of training a technical class.8 For those who made it to
grammar school, scientific education tended to focus on pure,
theoretical science, rather than on the industrial applications
of science. Such elitist attitudes continued to impede the
development of technical education in England throughout the
1950s and 60s.
At the same time, higher education was associated with
prestige, high social class, and 'useless' cultural education in the
classics and literature. Technical education in applied science and
engineering on the other hand, remained a far less prestigious
and lower class endeavour, and received little attention. These
lingering attitudes towards education in Britain privileged 'pure
science' over 'technical education'.
Conservative education policies of the 1950s and 60s gave
little priority to scientific, technical, and managerial education.
Although educational authorities acknowledged a correlation
between education and national economic development, they
remained oddly sceptical about the relevance of technical and
scientific education to industrial progress. A dissonance developed
between the mandate of new universities to boost economic
development and any realistic impact on the British economy.
'" 1
In the early 1960s, the Universities Grants Commission also

steered funding away from technical education and towards
traditional liberal arts . When the Nuffield Foundation Science
Teaching Project opened in 1962, it offered curricula in theoretical
and pure science rather than in applied science, technology,
and engineering.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the economic
miracle of the Industrial Revolution in Britain had attracted
scientists and engineers from less developed countries. By the
mid-twentieth century, that trend had reversed. A trickle in
the early 19 50s, the Brain Drain grew to a flood in the early
1960s, drawing off the elite of British science and technology. In
1952, roughly six per cent of new PhD scientists, engineers, and
technologists emigrated, most to the USA. A decade later, this
figure had grown to 17 per cent, and continued to rise over the
following years. In the five years from 1961 to 1966, emigration
of scientists, engineers and technologists nearly doubled from
3,000 to more than 6,000 annually, representing a third of annual
output of scientists, engineers, and technologists. The Committee
appointed to study the problem considered but ultimately rejected
calls for a 'Berlin Wall' to control scientific emigration, because
it was "pointless to restrict outflow when there is no domestic
outlet for skills".9
The gravity of the problem was acknowledged in a 1965
House of Lords debate on education, during which Lord Aberdare
criticised the persistent snobbery of British higher education:
I have a feeling that the universities . . . are still inclined to
give greater importance to the arts than to the sciences, and
to the academic than to the technologicaJ. There still exists
a kind of intellectuaJ snobbery that pays greater respect
to the man who misquotes Horace than the man who can
repair his own car. 10
Price had long shown an interest in education and was directly

involved in the Workers' Education movement in the North
Staffordshire region. He had grown up in the area, and had
followed in the footsteps of his father and his uncle, lecturing
at the Workers' Education College at Barlaston Hall in Stoke
on-Trent. During the 1960s, Price published no fewer than five
articles on education in Britain, including several on his ambitious
and far-reaching plans for the Potteries Thinkbelt.11
Price argued that the British educational system was designed
to do little more than preserve the status quo, to maintain
traditional class structures and divisions, and to prepare workers
for already existing types of jobs. In 1968, he wrote:
Education is today little more than a method of distorting
the individuaJ's [mind and behaviour] to enable him to
benefit from existing sociaJ and economic patterning. Such
an activity, benevolently controlled and directed by an elite

can. . . do little more than improve on the range and network
of structures it already has under its control.12
I 1 1 lce
pointed out that "industrial and professional education

been aimed at the production of people equipped with skills
1 woviously recognised as necessary by their educators".13 Little
p1 ovision was made for the inevitable social or economic changes,
1 1 or had any thought been given to how workers whose jobs had
l locome obsolete might be prepared for future skills and industries
.vot unforeseen.
By the mid-1960s, it had become clear to Price that if Britain
wore to remain competitive in an increasingly technological
world, a complete rethinking of the British system of higher
nducation would be required, and his experiences with the Fun
I 'nlace only served to reinforce this view. Price felt that one of the
111uJor weaknesses of the British university system was:
l 11Ls
The lack of awareness of both the correct scale and intensity

at which such education should occur. Present institutions
are both too small and too exclusive. The present context
is in danger of lacking, on the one hand, recognisable
social relevance, and, on the other, the capacity to initiate
progress rather than attempt to catch up with it.14
" Hocial relevance" referred to the changing demography of

l l i 'ltain, "progress" to recent scientific and technological advances.
A 1964 article from The Times Educational Supplement,
on titled "Noddyland Atmosphere?", quoted Price as saying
t.l l o.t British universities were out of touch with current social,
ooonomic and scientific conditions.15 In the same article,
I.lie reporter repeated Price's pleas for an increased role for
t.oohnology and science in higher education.
Dr Robert L Drew, of the University of Strathclyde, later
vnlidated Price's clear sense of the technological shortcomings
1 if British higher education. As he worked on the Thinkbelt,
I 'Plce corresponded extensively with Drew on the role of science
I Llld technology in higher education. In a 1966 article entitled
" ltegional Development-With or Without Science?" (which Price
1 111refully highlighted and annotated) Drew observed:
The dramatic accumulation of wealth occurred first in
Europe and Western society generally, most largely because
it was a culture favourable to the methods and approach
of science and receptive to the technological manifestations
of scientific knowledge . . . . In spite of this, there is a dawning
recognition that, even within Britain there are also under
developed regions-indeed whole areas of our national
life and institutions which have not, so far, crossed this
science threshold. 16
The Potteries Thlnkbelt 1 99
Price shared Drew's valuation of the role of science in higher

education. Like Drew, he felt strongly that advanced education must
be socially emancipated and classless, but must also be anticipatory
of the uncertain needs of the future, not just for easily foreseeable
and predictable conditions. In a 1966 article on the Potteries
Thinkbelt, Price wrote that "further education and re-education must
be viewed as a major industrial undertaking and not as a service run
by gentlemen for the few".17
Price also criticised current trends in British academic
architecture, for similar reasons. In the 1964 article in The Times,
Price concluded that universities should put more emphasis on
applied science and technology, and worry less about physical
monumentality and the architectural symbolism of academia:
It is foolish to use Oxbridge buildings as models for monumental
structures devoted to eating and sleeping. Residence ought to
be part of the responsibility of local authorities. Isolation in
halls of residence is not relevant either to teaching or to social
considerations since students will mix with their friends, not
those they happen to live near. 18
In his 1966 article, "Life Conditioning" (which accompanied the

first publication of his plans for the Potteries Thinkbelt), Price
challenged architects to recognise that their true objective should
not be the creation of monuments symbolising the "image of a city",
but simply the provision of the means of "improvement of the quality
of life".19 Architects, he concluded, are more concerned with creating
monuments for some distant and improbable "posterity" than with
improving people's lives in the here and now, and perhaps for a while
into the future. Price's critiques of education and architecture set the
stage for his plans for the Potteries Thinkbelt in North Staffordshire.
Although Price considered the Potteries Thinkbelt a serious
project, it was initially the casual result of a wager. Price recounted
its peculiar origins, which occurred one day over lunch in 1964:
It was the result of a bet. I used to have lunch with the junior
minister, Lord Kennet, then known as Wayland Young,
[Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local
Government from 1966 to 1970] . We started talking about
universities. He was responsible politically for new universities.
I went on criticising them and complaining about new buildings
in Cambridge, Brighton, and Lancaster.20
In addition to his complaints about recent academic architecture,

Price also repeated his concerns about the entire British higher
education system to Lord Kennet. Finally, as Price explained,
"Kennet got fed up with these criticisms and said, 'Why don't you tell
us what we should do?' That annoyed me so much that I decided to
do something."21 It was this challenge from Lord Kennet to come up
with an alternative system of higher education that motivated Price
to produce his plan for the Thinkbelt. He immediately thought of

the North Staffordshire Potteries as the ideal site for his solution. In
addition to providing badly needed advanced technical education, it
would also:
. . . take advantage of local unemployment, a stagnant local
housing programme, a redundant rail network, vast areas of
unused, unstable land, consisting mainly of old coal-working
and clay pits, and a national need for scientists and engineers.22
Price chose the North Staffordshire Potteries as the site for his
alternative to British higher education for emotional and practical
T h e devasted landscape
of the North Staffordshire
Potteries, c 1 963
G elatin silver print
I mage courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Montreal
The Potteries Thinkbelt 201
Adderly G reen
C o l l i ery i n its heyday
One of hu ndreds of
coalmin es in North
Stafforshire, i t was
dosed
in
the 1 960s.
I mage courtesy of
North Stafford s h i re
C h a m b er of Commerce
A n early twentieth
century postcard showing
h u n d reds of coal -fired
bottle k i l n s I n Longton
Image courtesy of
North Stafford s h i re
Chamber of Commerce
202
The Architecture of Cedric Price
reasons. First, Price's boyhood home was in Stone, only four miles
to the south of his proposed Thinkbelt. Second, he was well aware
of the dire conditions in North Staffordshire and hoped to give
1mmething back to his homeland:
- -
t:
.,. --
. //
"
WOOD & SONS ofBURSLEM
This area of North Staffordshire-including the Potteries

and Newcastle-under-Lyme-is economically less prosperous
than the rest of the region. As far as built physical
environment goes, it is a disaster area-largely unchanged
and uncared for since its industrial expansion throughout
the nineteenth century. 23
Price found higher unemployment in the Potteries "than in

Liverpool or Manchester, which were the two big cities on either
side of the Potteries".24 Through his work on the Fun Palace, Price
had established enough political contacts to obtain confidential
government data showing the real extent of unemployment,
population, and industrial productivity in North Staffordshire.
'rhis data showed a 400 per cent increase in unemployment in the
20 years from 1943 to 1963.25
The region had poor soil and was not well suited to agriculture
but had rich deposits of both high-quality coal and clay. The easy
availability of coal plus the ready supply of clay had made North
Staffordshire a natural location for the production of ceramics. Up
to ten tons of coal are required to fire each ton of clay. 26 As early as
the fifteenth century, North Staffordshire was already renowned
for its pottery, fired using the local, high quality 'long-flame' coal.
'I'hus, the area became known as the "Potteries".
For more than 250 years, the North Staffordshire Potteries
were the centre of the English ceramics industry. It was here
that Josiah Wedgwood and Enoch Wood (Price's great-great
grandfather) established their porcelain 'manufactories' in the
early eighteenth century. By 1900, Stoke-on-Trent boasted more
than 1 ,000 ceramics manufacturers. These included some of the
most famous names in porcelain, such as Crown Staffordshire,
Daulton, Minton, Spade, Wedgwood, and Wood & Sons.
The Potteries also played an important role in the development
of modern transportation technologies. In the eighteenth century,
Josiah Wedgwood constructed a network of canals which made
the transport of materials to and from the Potteries much easier.
In the nineteenth century, the extensive system of canals was
supplanted by railroads. By the end of the nineteenth century,
the landscape of the Potteries was dotted with hundreds of
ceramics factories and foundries using the latest technological
innovations of the day, all connected by an intricate matrix of
railway lines. Beneath the ground, coal mines extended in every
possible direction.
For more than two centuries the collieries and potteries of
North Staffordshire thrived. A 1938 census showed 2,000 kilns
in operation in Stoke-on-Trent alone, 50 per cent of the workforce
Advertisement for
Wood & Sons, 1 95 5
was employed in pottery making, while most of the rest worked in

the coal mines. The prosperity of the North Staffordshire Potteries
was entirely dependent on two related industries: coal and
ceramics, and the link between pits and pots was a strong one.
Like many established industries in England, the coal and
ceramics industries of North Staffordshire came upon hard times
after the Second World War. Britain's industrial infrastructure had
become increasingly obsolete and unable to compete with the more
modern industries in the United States, Europe, and Asia.27 North
Staffordshire was particularly hard hit and the Potteries faced stiff
competition from newer and more efficient ceramics factories in
Germany and Japan.
The easy success of the Potteries also contributed to its own
undoing. For centuries, the local coal mines had provided cheap
fuel for the kilns, but by the early twentieth century, air pollution
had become a major problem. For a while, polluted air was merely
tolerated as part of the landscape and even regarded as a sign of
prosperity. One postcard from the 1930s of a particularly smoky
factory town bears the caption, "The change of air soots me well at
Stoke-on-Trent: sooty skies ! ".28 However, in the post-war years, air
pollution was beginning to be recognised as a serious risk to public
health both within the Potteries and throughout England.
For four days in December of 1952, a thick smog settled over
the city of London. This single deadly 'pea-soup' fog (a mixture
of fog and sulphur dioxide from thousands of coal fires) was
responsible for an estimated 4,000 deaths.29 The ensuing public
outcry prompted the 1956 Clean Air Act, which called for drastic
reductions in the use of coal in favour of cleaner fuels, such
as natural gas from the newly discovered offshore deposits in
Britain's North Sea. While the Clean Air Act helped to alleviate
air pollution in British cities, it also dealt a deathblow to the
North Staffordshire coal mining industry, which in turn had a
devastating effect on the ceramics industries of the Potteries.
As the nation began to switch from coal to gas and electricity,
the North Staffordshire potteries were forced to find alternatives
to coal. In the 1960s, ten of the region's maj or coal mines ceased
operations and left thousands of miners unemployed. The mine
closures continued throughout the 1970s and 80s, with the
last North Staffordshire coal mine at Silverdale shutting down
in late 1998.
As a result of the Clean Air Act, only a few hundred coal-fired
kilns were still permitted to operate within the Potteries. Although
some factories had switched to more expensive gas and electric
kilns, most were forced to close due to rising fuel costs and foreign
competition. Pottery workers were laid off by the thousands and
joined the coal miners in the ranks of the unemployed. The rise
and fall of the North Staffordshire Potteries recapitulates the
trajectory of Britain's industrial fortunes.
When it was all over, centuries of intensive manufacturing had
turned the once-rustic landscape of the Potteries into a blighted
An early twentieth
century postcard
depicting factories,
potteries and collieries
at Hartshill
Image courtesy of
North Staffordshire
Chamber of Commerce
Advertisement for
natural gas for the
ceramics industry, 1 95 5
Although gas was
cleaner, it also proved
more expensive than
coal and impractical for
the Potteries.
Image courtesy of
North Staffordshire
Chamber of Commerce
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industrial wasteland of ruined factories, rusting machinery, and

aging rail lines. Mining had also despoiled the landscape with
pit-heads and slag heaps, while miles of underground excavation
had begun to produce a serious subsidence problem, in which
abandoned mine shafts would collapse, causing the ground
suddenly to sink several inches. In the most extreme instances,
'sink holes' swallowed unsuspecting people and animals.
Photographs of the area, taken by Price in the early 1 960s,
present a stark and depressing wasteland of decaying factories
and rubbish-strewn lots. These images could easily be mistaken
for the worst depredations caused by German bombs and rockets.
The Labour government finally took note of the plight of the
Potteries and in 1965 commissioned the West Midlands Regional
Study to try to come up with a solution. The final report did
little more than confu>m that the region did indeed have serious
economic, industrial, and educational problems . The study was
widely dismissed as useless-its data incomplete, its findings
superficial and its recommendations too little, too late.30
By the mid-1960s, the great 'machine' of the Potteries-its
factories, work force, rail lines, its patterns and norms of
production-could not adapt to change, and had fallen into ruin;
what remained was a decrepit landscape of a failed utopian dream
of science, reason, and industrial capital. The factories, furnaces,
and coal mines lay in shambles, but two things remained: the
population of thousands of unemployed industrial workers, and
a network of rail lines stretching between now vacant nodes on
an industrial map whose features had been erased. Yet Price felt
that the region still had two important resources. There remained
a vast network of roads, rail lines and factories, all of which were
under-utilised and ripe for renewal. The important resource,
however, was the region's people. Price strongly believed that
obsolete industries in the Potteries could not be revived, and that
therefore unemployed workers needed to learn entirely new skills
for new jobs-many of them generated by emerging post-industrial
technologies. However, he also noted the scarcity of opportunities
for such retraining. Within Britain, the technical colleges,
"particularly Hatfield which wasn't very big, and Manchester,
which was enormous, were all bursting at the seams".31 What little
advanced education there was available in the North Staffordshire
area, such as the small technical college at Keele and the Worker's
Education Association, was insufficient for the huge numbers of
unemployed workers.
Price noted as well that the Keele technical college remained
aloof from the real needs of the Potteries:
The first post-war New University at Keele has shown
the slowest growth of all universities (present student
population approximately 1 ,000) has little contact with
the area and few faculties related to the industrial content
of the area.32
Price underscored the misplaced priorities of the new University

of Keele, noting that:
In a letter to The Guardian, 282 students at Keele very
relevantly protested at the 100,000 chapel erected at the
university when in Stoke-on-Trent 'about 24,000 people
are living in sub-standard housing'. It wasn't as if there was
nowhere for the religious-:rrld
ln ed to go. Yet now a university's
building needs are looked on as something quite separate
from the needs of the community that surrounds it.33
To Price, advanced education needed to be knitted into the social

and economic fabric of the community and the region, not to
remain aloof and cloistered from it.
The Potteries Thinkbelt was not the only major plan in the
works for educational reform in Britain at the time. In 1965,
Prime Minister Harold Wilson made good on his election promise
to establish a nationally organised correspondence school, an
University of the Air, aimed primarily at technological training.
In March of that year, he appointed Jennie Lee as head of the
To Liverpool.
M1nchestr.fM6}
ITTS
H I LL
JRANSFER AREA
Site Plan of the Potteries

Thinkbelt, 1 965
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadian Centre for
Architecture, M ontreal
PTS= Potteries Thinkbelt
- PTB service roads

=
other roads
- PTB service railways

_...... other r1ilwl'(1
atations -
PTB Iii public UH
PTB uoe only
with small siding
c:::::::J housing areH
capsule housing
sprawl
e erete
housing
...
..
battery
expansion area
filHII transfer areas
- lecultyare1
llll1lllli
faculty/ industry shared 1rea
MAD ELEY
TRANSFER AREA
0 Moles
To Bitmingliam lon.don (M6)
To Srafford, 81rn1ingh3m
The Potteries Thinkbelt
207
Department of E ducation and Science. Her intention was to turn

the idea of the University of the Air into the Open University, an
achievement which many people compared to the success of her
late husband Aneurin Bevan's National Health Service plan.
The Potteries Thinkbelt and Open University were essentially
competing schemes, appealing to very similar constituencies
and resources. From the outset, this greatly reduced any chance
Price might have had to realise his project. Price was well aware
of the plans for the Open University, and even sought the counsel
of sociologist and social historian Peter Laslett, fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge, who was appointed to the Advisory Committee
for the Open University in 1965.
While the Fun Palace always seemed to have defied definition
(a problem which contributed to its eventual demise), the
programme and scope of the Potteries Thinkbelt was much more
clearly defined (although the client was not) . Price envisioned
the project as a "higher education facility" , providing scientific
and technical education for 22,000 students. He coined the term
"Thinkbelt" to describe the regional scale of the project as well as
its educational orientation. He refused to refer to the Thinkbelt
as a university because he disliked the upper class connotations
of the word, complaining that universities were little more than
"medieval castles with power points [electrical outlets] , located in
gentlemanly seclusion".34
In opposition to the traditional practice of segregation of
universities, Price proposed a thorough integration of the
Thinkbelt with local industries (the few that remained functional)
as well as with the community at large. He also sought to break
down the distinctions between practical and theoretical education
and working and living. As he explained: "The PTb [Price's
acronym for the Potteries Thinkbelt] is planned to break down the
isolation and peculiarity associated with further education."35
Price reasoned that the student population would come from
all over the UK because there was a national shortage of technical
universities. He explained that "its size, 20,000 students, is such
that its effect will be national rather than regional".36 Price's goal
was to erase the traditional distinction between classical and
technical education, between pure and applied science, and he was
adamant that the Potteries Thinkbelt would have a deliberate "bias
towards pure and applied science and engineering''.37 Computers
were extremely rare in colleges and universities at the time, but
Price insisted that the Potteries Thinkbelt would "make full use of
technological resources (like computers) now reserved largely for
activities outside the universities".38
The Potteries Thinkbelt was to be more than just a response
to the critical need for advanced technical education in Britain
at the time. Price also sought to establish the North Staffordshire
Potteries as a centre of science and new technologies in the
English Midlands, much as it had been during the first Industrial
Revolution. He envisioned the Thinkbelt as "on a vast scale,
208
and oriented towards science and technology: a kind of cross

between Berkeley in California and a CAT [College of Advanced
Technology] ".39 Again his goal was national, to help to propel
England to the forefront of technology.
Recognising the rapid changes in science and technology,
and the unpredictability of future architectural and educational
needs, Price refined the concept of variable and indeterminate
architecture that he had developed at the Fun Palace for the
Thinkbelt. Given that post-war Britain was the site of rapidly
"changing educational, philosophical, sociological and political
ideas, as well as . . . economic crises",40 he considered mobility and
flexibility to be essential to the success of the project:
The proposed development is planned to enable advanced
education to be undertaken in conditions taking full
advantage of present day national and individual
mobility. However, it is so designed to prevent its form
and organisation from being restrictive in the future. A
far greater mobility of students between aJl educational
establishments is envisaged. This necessitates calculated
'slack' in the educational spatial capacity so planned.41
As evidence of the need for indeterminacy and flexibility,

Price cited a letter to The Times written by the principal of
Loughborough Training College, who concluded that since,
"education is in such a state of flux-it always is-and it is so
subject to the effects of changing educational, philosophical,
sociological and political ideas, as well as to economic crises that
it is only sensible for the buildings to be adaptable".42
The Thinkbelt, Price promised, would:
. . . replace the existing rigid age and time structuring of
university occupancy with a more elastic system enabling
full participation by part-time and re-education factions. The
pure and applied science and engineering bias of the PTb
involves an emphasis on the large flexible organisation of
faculties with easy links to national networks.43
Price based this laboratory of indeterminate architecture on

the cybernetic models of Norbert Wiener and the still nascent
computer programs of John von Neumann, refining ideas that
he had first developed for the Fun Palace. The programme and
physical configuration of the Thinkbelt were to be entirely fluid
and capable of endless rearrangement and adaptation to future
needs and conditions . Christopher Alexander, who met with
Price in April 1966, was impressed by Price's design process, and
particularly by his application of cybernetic analysis to break
down and organise activities.
In order to ensure maximum flexibility and mobility, Price
utilised the derelict railway network of the vast Potteries district
209
as the basic infrastructure for the new technical 'school'. Mobile

classroom, laboratory, and residential modules would be placed
on the revived railway lines and shunted around the region, to be
grouped and assembled as required by current needs, and then
moved and regrouped as those needs changed. Modular housing
and administrative units would be assembled at various fixed
points along the rail lines.
Several other features established the Potteries Thinkbelt as a
revolutionary idea, especially for its time. It marked an alternative
to the conception of architecture as the construction of free
standing buildings to the structuring of society and the economy
at large. While its sheer scale was unprecedented, it avoided
conventional architectural gestures of monumentality. It was
not a 'building', nor even truly a 'campus', but a comprehensive
architectural, educational, industrial, and economic plan covering
an area of more than 174 square kilometres ( 108 square miles).
It was intended to transform not just the space of the Potteries,
but every aspect of the lives lived there as well. One of the most
radical aspects of Price's Thinkbelt was his concept of education
as an industry, not just of industrial education. In his brief for the
project, he wrote, "because advanced education is not regarded
as a major national industry, it is in danger of failing to achieve
both a recognisable social relevance and a capacity to initiate
progress rather than an attempt to catch up with it".44 While
the British government poured millions of pounds into trying to
revive obsolete industries of a bygone industrial age, Price planned
instead the wholesale reclamation of the rusting infrastructure
of England's industrial heartland, and its conversion into a new
'industry' of education, research, and information. He believed
that the entire structure and rationale of British higher education
needed to be reconsidered as a new kind of industry for the post
industrial epoch. If Britain was to succeed in this new economy,
it must take education seriously as a primary economic activity
rather than as a secondary endeavour, subordinate to industrial
production. Price argued that Britain's economic future would
increasingly depend on intellectual production, technical research,
and continued learning, and that students should be considered
as a new type of worker. As part of his reconception of education
as an industry, Price suggested that students should be properly
funded and that "grants must become salaries".45 Price did not,
however, believe that the 'industrialisation' of education meant
that education should be standardised. There would still be enough
flexibility to accommodate the varying needs of individuals.
Price insisted that since "the major concern is to increase
the capacity of the individual to learn throughout life, then an
entirely different attitude to the conditions (and buildings) under
which such learning can best take place is needed".46 The task, he
argued, would be particularly arduous in a nation like Britain, with
well-established and deeply entrenched educational traditions.
However, Price concluded that there was no alternative: "Learning
2 1 0 The Architecture of Cedl"ic Price
will
soon become the major industry of every developing country,

and those countries with established educational systems will
have to restructure most drastically their existing facilities."47
He stated that "just as industrial and commercial automation is
rendering various skills and operations obsolete, new methods
of information storage, retrieval, comparison and computation
enable the content of traditional education to be pruned".48
In his introductory remarks for a 1966 article on the Potteries
Thinkbelt, which appeared in Architectural Design, Robin
Middleton underscored Price's idea of education as industry:
The Potteries Thinkbelt is a seriously considered project
for revitalising that area in North Staffordshire which has
for generations depended for its livelihood and all sense of
community on the manufacture of pottery. This industry
has now become stagnant; the area a wasteland. Cedric
Price's revolutionary proposal is that advanced education
and in particular advanced technical education-should
become the new prime industry.49
Price also sincerely hoped that the Thinkbelt would induce

commercial development and would act as an economic catalyst.
In addition to retraining workers and providing education for
younger students just entering university, he hoped that his
Thinkbelt would help revive the regional economy and alleviate
the rising unemployment rates. Aside from teachers, the project
would employ thousands of workers in the service and support
industries and would anticipate "hitherto uncharted" areas in
education, technology, and employment.
The vast triangular site defined by the Potteries Thinkbelt
encompassed several factory towns, the largest of these being
Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent. It also included
dozens of ceramics factories, or 'potteries', in addition to the
University of Keele, where he planned new laboratories for applied
physics and chemistry.
He envisioned a close working relation between learning
and manufacturing. Mobile rail-mounted teaching and research
facilities could be shunted to both new and existing manufacturing
plants which were involved in work relevant to the research
at hand. Students would benefit from observing and analysing
traditional modes of manufacture in existing factories, while
new factories could be built to implement the resulting advances
in technology:
Though the effect of the PTb in providing new forms of
employment directly related to the complex will be of
short-term benefit to the community heavily dependent on
two basic, and contracting industries [coal and ceramics],
the long-term value of the PTb will rest on the capacity of
its research facilities to attract new industries to the area
The Potteries Thlnkbelt 2 1 1
and to reorientate and revitalise existing industries such as

ceramic manufacture.50
Price repeatedly emphasised that in the Thinkbelt:

Interaction between faculties and existing industry will
be, at once, a short-term benefit to both. The links will be of
a temporary, flexible nature . . . . Long-term operational links
with both local and national industry will demand a capacity
on the part of the PTb to build and sustain experimental
plants of the type now confined to very large industries and
state institutions.51
Here again, Price is in agreement with Dr Drew's proposal for

regional centres for scientific study:
Not least, these regional science units must have, as a
deliberate aim, the presentation of the results of their
research, freely and openly, to the people of the region, and

constantly involve them in the discussions, evaluations and
choices about the applications of scientific knowledge and the
alternative technologies and techniques by means of which
their natural resources might be harnessed and developed. 52
Besides provicling a radically new 'industrial' alternative to higher

education, the Thinkbelt also proposed new modes of living. Price
envisioned a new form of community, which rejected traditional
notions of central public gathering. As Robin Middleton explained
in the introduction to an .Arnhi teaturaJ Design article:
Students would live all over the areas. Their dispersal would
mean that they would not live within a self-conscious and
artificial 'student-community' . They would be members of a
whole community, living and working together. Living units,
like teaching units, would be moved whenever necessary;
they would be expandable and, of course, expendable. No one
would be straight-jacketed into a fixed community. 53
Price saw the Thinkbelt as an opportunity for 'hot-house' research

into new living patterns and types of housing. He felt that since
students were particularly hard on housing stock, caring little for
maintenance and upkeep, they would make excellent subjects with
which to test new construction techniques, bulleting types, and
housing designs:
Students couldn't care a damn about maintenance . . . are very
antisocial compared with the householder, because they keep
fUIUl.y hours and they don't appear to do any work. They
have . . . excessive production of noise at the wrong times, no
interest in dustmen or window cleaners or maintaining
their roof. . . . These students could be the guinea pigs for
2 1 2 The Architecture of Cedric Price
prototypes for a new sort of housing because they required

good sound insulation.54
Price also believed that the three to five year period of student
occupancy closely approximated the probable living patterns of
1m increasingly mobile society of the future.
Far from being cloistered and static, the vast and dispersed
'Phinkbelt region would be constantly in motion. Students and
teaching activities would continually interact, erasing conventional
boundaries between working and living. Price hoped that the
olose integration of the project with the community at large would
further break down the distinction between learning and living,
allowing education to become a normal part of the daily life of
the community:
The system by which the public is self-consciously invited
to participate, on sufferance, in certain activities in existing
universities will not obtain in the PTb, since the flexibility
of learning equipment and methods will allow national
participation by students in fields at present rigidly defined as
secondary or adult education.BB
Price concluded that the Thinkbelt must be "large enough to involve

the whole community and thus to make people realise that further
education is not merely desirable but essential".58 His goal was to
benefit the citizenry at large, not just the student population:
. . . the subsidiary activities of the student population will
enable the community as a whole to benefit from a new and
specialised plant for leisure and recreation. Similarly, the
information and learning facilities provided by the PTb are to
be used by the whole population. 57
A mobile 'portal' crane

used for handling large
shipping containers
This is the type of
crane that Price planned
to use in the Potteries
Thinkbelt Transfer Areas
to move and assemble
the mobile rail modules.
I mage courtesy of Fruehauf
Price added that the project's mobile libraries and information

centres would be: "For all the population, so you could actually
improve the grain of the social infrastructure through the students
being used as the excuse financially and operationally, to actually
build these things, and also to test them."58
Besides the existing roads, rail lines, and the few remaining
factories, the only semi-permanent elements of the Thin.kbelt were
to be the three large 'Transfer Areas'. At these Transfer Areas,
modular and mobile housing and teaching units could be assembled
and connected by giant overhead cranes typically used in the
container-based shipping industries. With these exceptions, all
other elements of the Thin.kbelt were modular and mobile, capable
of deployment to any given location, and then easily relocated to
a new site, as required by the continually evolving programme
and curriculum. Individual modular units could be combined in
whatever configuration was required and then shunted off on rails
to the proper site.
The most northern point of the triangular site of the Thin.kbelt
was at Pitts Hill, a crossroads just north of Tunstall. The second
point was 13 kilometres (eight miles) to the southwest at the town
of Madeley, not far from the University of Keele, and the third point
of the triangle was at Meir, 19 kilometres ( 1 2 miles) from Madeley
and 16 kilometres (ten miles) from Pitts Hill. These three towns
not only defined the limits of the Thinkbelt, but also served as the
principal Transfer Areas. The rail lines connecting the three areas
o p p o s i te
Photomontage of the
M adeley Transfer Area,
Potteries Thinkbelt,
1 966
I n k on gelatin s i lver print

Note the combination of
medium load boom crane
and heavy l i ft gantry
crane, designed to
provide maximum
fle x i b i l ity i n moving
and asse m b l i ng m o b i l e
l i ving and teaching
modules. To the left
are the vast workshop
sheds with office and
short-term residential
towers rising above.
I m age courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
C o l l e ct i o n Centre
Canad i e n d 'Architecture/
Canad i an Centre for
S ketched plan and

section of a typical
Transfer Area, Potteries
T h inkbelt,
1 964
Graphite, black and red

i n k , adhesive dots on
wove paper
38
x 50.7 cm
I mage courtesy of
Cedri c Price Fonds,
C o l l ection Centre
Canad i e n d ' Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
"
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2 1 4 The Architecture
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Cedric Price
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Diagrammatic plan
and section of Madeley
Thinkbelt, 1 965
Black ink on wove paper
35 x 88.4 cm
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadien d'Arch itecture/
Canadian Centre for
Axonometric of the
Madeley Transfer
Area for Potteries
Thi nkbelt, 1 965
Diazotype on wove paper
59.5 x 84.4 cm
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Col lection Centre
Canadien d'Archi tecture/
Canadian Centre for
The Potteries Thinkbelt 2 1 5
were laid out radially, converging near the centre of the Thinkbelt
at the rail junction at Stoke-on-Trent. The three Transfer Areas
were also connected by roads, which roughly follow the three
sides of the Thinkbelt triangle . While all Transfer Areas permitted
movement and assembly of modular elements within the Thinkbelt
rail and road systems, they also provided specialised connections
outward to national highway, rail, and air networks.
Madeley was the largest of the Transfer Areas. Price designed
the area to permit easy linkage between the internal Thinkbelt rail
and road systems and the national M6 motorway, and to provide
"facilities for handling, assembly and construction of large scale
goods and equipment". 59 There were to be two enormous enclosed
workshops where the various types of mobile teaching and living
modules used in the Thinkbelt could be built and maintained. Next
to these huge service bays would be a series of modular offices
and workspaces, similar to those Price would later design for
his 1977 Inter-Action Centre in London. The Madeley Transfer
Area comprised nearly 1,360,000 cubic metres of flexible space,
reserving 46,450 square metres for static functions, such as
storage and mechanical systems. Rising above the Madeley
Transfer Area would be several towers containing more than 9,290
square metres of 'hotel' type accommodation for "short and medium
term visiting staff' .50 The PTb rail system extended a mile beyond
Madeley into an area reserved for future housing expansion.
Price envisioned the Transfer Area at Pitts Hill as a connection
between the PTb and the national British Railways system. Pitts
Hill provided facilities for "rapid and continuous bulk goods and
personnel exchange". These would contain some 8 7 7,822 cubic
metres of flexible space, with just less than 27,870 square metres
of dedicated space for fixed equipment. Pitts Hill was also to be
equipped with a single portal crane as well as two 'travelator'
conveyor belt systems for moving freight and people. There were
to be no living accommodations at Pitts Hill, because of noise from
the main line rail connection.
The Meir Transfer Area linked the Thinkbelt network to an
airfield, "providing facilities for rapid exchange of personnel or
lightweight goods from PTb to national or international networks".61
A third smaller than Pitts Hill, Meir included approximately
566,337 cubic metres of variable, flexible space and 33,445 square
metres for fixed and dedicated uses. Goods and mobile teaching
would be handled by three types of cranes: portal, monorail,
and mobile (road-based) cranes, as well as by forklifts . These
cranes also serviced the 1 , 1 1 5 square metres of single-floor living
accommodations for students and staff, providing easy access
across movable bridges and gantries to mobile rail-based laboratory
units and other portable enclosures.
In addition to the Transfer Areas, there were to be four 'Faculty
Areas' or teaching nodes within the Thinkbelt, located alongside
the rail lines at Silverdale, Hanley, Tunstall/Pitts Hill, and Fenton/
Longton. At these Faculty Areas, mobile rail-mounted teaching
2 1 6 The Architecture of Cedric Price
Diagrammatic plan and

sections of Pitts H i l l
Thi nkbelt, 1 964
Coloured inks on
wove paper
25.5 x 1 9 cm
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadian Centre for
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units could be parked in rail sidings. The number, corrfl.guration, size,

and length of time that units might be at any of the four locations
would depend on the need for them at any given time. The Fenton/
Longton Faculty Area was the largest, covering more than 7,432
square metres, followed by Tunstall/Pitts Hill with 6,225 square
metres. The smallest (though still quite substantial) was the 4,924
square metre Faculty Area at Silverdale.
Price also proposed secondary teaching areas, which he called
'Faculty Sidings', at Hanley and Silverdale. At these sites, mobile
units could be temporarily stationed adjacent to factories and
other industrial facilities. These areas permitted the all-important
coordination between industry and the Thinkbelt research and
educational activities. In addition, there were seven small 'mini
siding' areas at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Hanley, Cobridge, Burslem,
Tunstall and Normacott, where mobile self-teaching units and
computerised information storage units could be parked as needed.
Price designed six types of mobile, rail-based units to roam the
rail lines of the Thinkbelt:
Diagrammatic plan
and sections of Pitts Hiii
Thinkbelt, 1 964
Black, blue and red i n k
o n wove paper
2 5 x 1 9 cm
I mage courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadian Centre for
1. 'Rail.bus' coaches designed to shuttle students to and

from various points within the Thinkbelt.
2. Seminar units, used either in conjunction with normal

Rail.bus services, or in separate services with long stops
of scheduled duration at PTb stations, or parked at small
Faculty Sidings, providing random discussion opportunities
or scheduled televised lectures to student areas.
3. Self-teach carrel units used in conjunction with closed
or open circuit TV transmission or linked information
and program storage units.
4. Information, computerised data and equipment
storage units.
5. Fold-out, inflatable units. Once in place, the sides would
flip down, extending the unit to a width of 24 feet,
over which a large dome would inflate. Hydraulic levelling
j acks would then be deployed to level and stabilise the
entire unit . These units provided either two orthodox 30
person lecture areas or one demonstration or television
studio area, linked by cable and wireless transmission to
information and equipment stores .
6. Fold-out decking units. Up to three of these units could be

parked side-by-side on parallel tracks, and connected
into a single 24 foot wide deck or platform. Like the fold-out
inflatable units, these also used hydraulic levelling devices
for stability. They could be used either for 'access to other
units, or as support for specialised or fine-control [controlled
environment] rigid enclosures positioned on units by
mobile crane ' .62
Some of these units, such as the railbuses, were self-propelled,

with scheduled service of class length between stops so that students
could literally learn 'on the move'. Classroom and laboratory

trains could be linked to form larger units. The largest lecture
demonstration units spanned three parallel rail lines and came
equipped with fold-out floor decks and inflatable walls .
Price's highly detailed drawings for each mobile unit type even
indicate the size and location of cloakrooms. Price clearly
identified mobility as both mechanism and metaphor for the
changing nature of education within post-industrial society.
While today's networked technologies do not require such
physical mobility, the PTb transport system would have provided
important links to factories and other fixed sites in the region.
Price outlined 19 different housing areas in the Thinkbelt,
utilising four basic types: capsule, sprawl, crate, and battery.
In all, there were to be 32,000 living units, although this number
could be increased in the 'housing expansion areas' reserved for
future growth. Like the mobile teaching units in the Thinkbelt, the
housing units could be moved around and rearranged by cranes
and rail as the programme changed over time.
For each of the housing types, Price designed kitchen and
bathroom modules which were carefully detailed in large-scale
drawings. He delineated the mechanical requirements for all
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Diagrams of typical
Faculty Sid ings,
Potteries Thinkbelt, 1 966
Black ink, adhesive
screentone sheet on
wove paper
3 2.9 x 8 6 . 2 cm
I mage courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
C o llection Centre
Canadien d ' Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
Diagrammatic plans
of rail based units,
Potteries T h inkbelt, 1 966
Black ink, graphite on
wove paper
3 2 .4 x 87 cm
I mage courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
C o llection Centre
Canad iend' Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
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types of bodily needs, from full immersion baths to showers

and toilet types. He went so far as to determine the mechanical
requirements for each unit, as well as the pipe diameters and
required rates of water flow and pressure for entire housing
areas. During the planning of the project, Price met regularly
with engineer Frank Newby to develop the structural systems
required for each of the housing areas, as well as for the faculty
and transfer areas. His meticulous drawings indicate details and
methods of assembly, which even today could readily be used to
construct the housing units.
The 'capsule' housing type was comprised of small units
stacked in staggered linear layers along steeply sloping sites,
allowing good views. These units could be utilised in sites too
steep for conventional housing. For each unit in this housing
type, Price designed a rectilinear framework into which various
types of panels could be installed. Occupants could choose from
various panel options, depending on their needs for privacy,
light, View, ventilation, or access. For example, they had a
choice of five types of doors, ranging from solid, to glazed and
ventilated. They could also create residences of various sizes,
since capsule units could be used singly as small, single-bedroom
Typical housing units,

Potteries Thlnkbelt, 1 96 5
32 x 44.lcm
Each unit consists of
four zones:
I . A 'dry' area for living
and working (requiring
no mechanical services)
2. A 'wet' area for
bathrooms and
kitchens (requiring
mechanical services)
3 . Sleeping areas,
requiring sound
insulation
4. An exterior envelope
permitting various
degrees of privacy,
acoustic insulation,
views, ventilation
and passage
I mage courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadian Centre for
Capsule housing,
Potteries Thinkbelt, 1 966
32.4 x 4 4 cm
Located on sloping sites,
Capsule housing units
take advantage of the
topography and views
while permitting privacy
for their users.
I m age courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadien d'Archltecture/
Canadian Centre for
= = : clear glaz1ng panels wilh loumd p11Yacy conlrol

....__ - translucl'llt panels
w- -ii lramhx:C"nl pantls abovf clear gl.12ing
units, or combined to form larger family apartments for married

students. Price designated Capsule housing for four locations:
Silverdale, Tunstall, Normacott, and Meir.
'Sprawl' housing consisted of clusters of small units equipped
with hydraulically controlled adjustable legs to permit their
use on any grolllld condition. Price designed two configurations
for the Sprawl llllits: large circular layouts with the focal point
towards the interior of the circle and large
'Y'
shaped layouts
which could fit around existing buildings or topography.

The Sprawl units were intended for use in areas with uneven
ground and unpleasant external views. Price thought this type
would be appropriate for nine locations: Silverdale, Etruria,
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Fenton,
Longton, and Normacott.
'Crate' housing somewhat predated a hybrid of Le Corbusier's
1953 Unite d'Habitation and Moshie Safdie's 1967 Montreal

Habitat. These consisted of modular units plugged into a large,
high-rise framework raised on pilotis. The individual housing
units were arranged in staggered layers, permitting excellent
views and were to be used at the perimeter of the Thinkbelt to
help define the edges of the region. Each unit was supplied with
its own plumbing and electrical service. Heating and cooling
however were provided within the overall frame enclosing the
units, eliminating the need for such systems within the individual
living units. The size and weight of Crate housing made them
impractical for use on lllleven or lUlStable grolllld , but Price folUld
suitable locations at Newcastle-under-Lyme, Burslem, Cobridge,
Stoke, Longton, Normacott, and Meir.
'Battery' housing was similar to Crate housing, but was low
rise and designed for use in the most problematic areas with
uneven grolUld or where the ground was prone to subsidence
and might suddenly sink several inches. Like the Sprawl
units, Battery housing units were equipped with hydraulically
controlled adjustable legs to permit their use on any ground
condition. Battery housing was horizontally expansive,
incorporating large, open-air promenades, and the possibility of
rooftop parking in some variants. Price planned to use Battery
housing in nine locations at Newcastle-lUlder-Lyme, Burslem,
Cobridge, Hanley, Stoke, Longton, and Normacott.
Price was quite serious about the practicalities of actually
building the Thinkbelt. He met repeatedly with British Rail
officials to discuss weight and size limitations in order to
determine the maximum sizes of the Thinkbelt's rail-based mobile
units. Price also sought the advice of engineer Frank Newby, as
well as mechanical and electrical engineers, quantity surveyors
to estimate construction and equipment costs, and even catering
consultants to determine how to feed the population.63 Price
estimated that work could begin within nine months and that
the Thinkbelt could be operational within two years, although
final completion would take five years. He calculated that the
222
The Architecture
of
Cedric Price
Thinkbelt would cost an estimated 80 to 90 million pounds.

Price also compiled the detailed environmental data on the
Potteries which was needed to make the Thinkbelt a practical
reality. In March 1965, Price wrote to the National Coal Board
requesting data on ground subsidence rates in the Potteries.
With this data in hand, Price was able to work with Newby to
design structures which could withstand sudden changes in
ground level. Price also produced charts of the short-term and
long-term use and life cycles for each of the Thinkbelt elements.
These diagrams indicated the probable duration that any given
unit would be used in a specific location, while also projecting the
useful life of the unit before it would be dismantled and recycled.
Although Price had carefully considered every possible aspect
of the project, the Thinkbelt was still uncharted territory, filled
with unknowns and uncertainties.
--
-. - - -
...:
i :_-
Diagrammatic elevations
and plans of battery
housi ng, Potteries
Thinkbelt, 1 966
34.2 x 44.S cm
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadian Centre for
...
...
Cut-away axonometric
view of crate housing,
Potteries Th inkbelt, 1 966
Black i n k on wove paper
32.4 x 87.4 cm
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadien d'Archltecture/
Canadian Centre for
13
..... !;!
P
...""
.
8
B
B
...
=.
8
.... .... ...... .....
1W , .,..,
4 17 3
The Potteries Thlnkbelt
223
In the Fun PaJace he had proposed using two enormous

travelling gantry cranes to move modular building elements
around the overaJl structure. Almost a decade later at the Inter
Action Centre, Price would utilise ready-made modular containers
to create plug-in spaces for offices and restroom facilities. For
the Thinkbelt, he proposed large portaJ cranes to transfer
prefabricated dwelling and teaching units from tractor trailers to
rail-based flat cars. He had become interested in the technologies
involved in handling modular materials, especiaJly the use of
gigantic cranes to move large prefabricated shipping containers
to and from trucks, trains, and ocean-going ships. In February
1965, he met with engineers and technicians from the Fruehauf
Crane and Container Company, to discuss the feasibility of using
such materiaJ-handling technologies in the Thinkbelt. Clearly,
Price wanted to do more than just think about the Thinkbelt: he
wanted to build it.
In 1967, Reyner Banham praised Price's application of these
new modular-shipping technologies in the Potteries Thinkbelt as
an example of the 'container revolution' . In an article entitled
I
I-
I
i
'
of
and u s e cycle,
Potteries T h i n kbelt, 1 966
D iazotype with
graphite i n scriptions
o n wove paper
60 x 84.5 cm
I mage courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadian Centre for
Archi tecture, M ontreal
. .,....
224 The Architecture
Chart of l i fe span
II III
I
'
Cedric Price
00
"Flatscape with Containers" in New Society Banham considered

the implications of the new technologies of 'containerised'
shipping. 64 Banham observed that materials were now shipped in
sealed, weather-tight containers, and that warehouses were no
longer required to shelter the goods in transit. Banham believed
that this had important implications for architecture, and
eliminated the need for permanent 'buildings' in favour of flexible
and movable modular construction. He enthusiastically described
buildings at the new container shipping ports:
. . . roofed volumes with side enclosures . . . [which] . .. seem to
grow naturally as light shells unencumbered by massive
masonry or cultural pretensions. In a portscape where
corrugated asbestos and ribbed aluminium sheet are not
cheap substitutes but the very stuff of building, a brick
looks as pompous as rusticated masonry does elsewhere
(the passenger hall at Tilbury [one of the largest container
shipping ports] , with its coats of arms and barrel vaults,
would look pompous anywhere, and attains a positively
nightmarish quality there). And these shed shells, stiff tents
almost, can be perfectly adequately designed by engineers
without any interference from architects, and usually are. 6 5
Despite his enthusiasm for the architectural potential presented

by the modular units and cranes of the new shipping methods,
Banham doubted that architects, even the renegades of Archigram,
could effectively utilise these new technologies. However, he
mentioned one exception: "The only architect who might, in fact,
is Cedric Price, who applied container technology near enough to
university teaching in his Thinkbelt project."66
Price was adamant that the Thinkbelt could and would be
realised, if he could just garner enough support for it. He was
determined not to make the same mistakes as had been made
with the ill-fated Fun Palace, for, by this time (early 1966), Price
was coming to grips with the fact that the Fun Palace project was
doomed. When the opportunity to develop the Potteries Thinkbelt
came along in 1964, Price's spirits lifted considerably, since he
was confident that the Thinkbelt would not encounter the kind
of bureaucratic and political resistance that the Fun Palace had.
It was perhaps understandable that the British government
might dismiss a leisure 'palace' devoted to 'fun ' and frivolity, but
surely, given the dire conditions of British technical education and
industry, the Thinkbelt would be a welcome solution to the crisis.
Through the Fun Palace experience, Price had become much
more media-savvy, and began to publicise his Potteries Thinkbelt
proposal, even before its completion in early 1966. In late 1965, he
had already written to J M Richards, editor of The Architectural
Review, about the project. Richards was interested, but would not
be able to publish it until August 1966. Price felt that time was of
the essence (because of the competing Open University) , and that to
225
delay publication more than six months would greatly reduce the
effectiveness of his Thinkbelt proposal. In January 1966, he wrote
to Richards to decline publication in The Architectural Review.
Price completed the Potteries Thinkbelt proposal in February
1966. The newspapers began to take notice almost immediately.
On 10 April 1966, The Sunday Times published "A Sidings Think
belt for 20,000 Students", praising Price's Thinkbelt as "the latest,
and surely the most original, response to the country's need for
more higher education" .67
The article called it an "academic nirvana, planned to the last
piece of railway rolling-stock", and went on to say that:
Laboratories for the mere simulation of scientific truth
would be out. Real factories, producing real contributions
to the white-hot technological revolution, would be in . . . .
The Belt would take seven years to construct, and cost
about 80 million . . . . Mobility and impermanence would be
the motto.66
The following day, The Daily Mail published an article on the

Thinkbelt entitled "Seats of Learning in Rail Coaches":
The report is the result of two years' research in the Stoke
on-Trent area by a 31 -year-old architect with a contempt for
traditional and new universities . Mr Cedric Price, known
for his work on the planned South London Fun Palace said
yesterday at his London office: 'Universities today are like
something out of Noddyland. They are Greek monasteries
with a tired country club atmosphere . I started the research
as a technical exercise and because I thought such a scheme
was necessary.' Students would use existing and modified
facilities in railway sidings . There would be mobile lecture
rooms in specially designed railway coaches, which could
be shunted to factories for practical study of day-to-day
methods. The scheme would cost about 80 million, and take
seven years to become fully operational. 'New universities
are basically the same medieval piles', said Mr Price. 'It is
time we tried something else.'69
Price compiled a distribution list for the final Thinkbelt proposal

which included Lord Kennet who, after Labour won the
1964 elections, was appointed junior minister at the Ministry
of Housing and Local Government. He also sent copies to
Christopher Alexander, Stanford Anderson, Reyner Banham,
Alvin Boyarski, Buckminster Fuller, Royston Landau, Peter
Laslett, Joan Littlewood, Frank Newby, Nicholas Pevsner,
The Evening Standard, New Society, and to Robin Middleton
at Architectural Design.
In June 1966, Price met with Middleton, who was on the
editorial staff of Architectural Design, to discuss publication of
the Potteries Thinkbelt. In retrospect, Price doubted that the

editor-in-chief of the magazine, Monica Pidgeon, would have
been interested in publishing the project, since she might have
considered it a flight of fancy. However, Pidgeon was away, and
fortunately Middleton was in charge. He was enthusiastic, and
agreed to run "PTb: Life Conditioning" in the October issue of
the magazine.
Probably due to Banham's influence, New Society also carried
Price's Potteries Thinkbelt proposal in their
2 June 1966
issue, although the drawings and text were simplified for the
predominately non-architectural readership of the magazine.
Price also published a greatly condensed version of the text of the
Thinkbelt proposal in Essays in Local Government, edited by his

friend Ellis Hillman, a Labour member of the GLC.70
From MIT, Stanford Anderson wrote to Price, requesting a copy

of the Thinkbelt proposal. Price reported that Kenneth Frampton
also obtained a copy for the Avery Library at Columbia University.
Price wrote to the Stoke-on-Trent City library to ask if they might
be interested in purchasing a copy of the proposal.When the head
librarian wrote back to say that there were not enough funds to
buy the plans, Price sent them a copy anyway, at no cost. Requests
for plans also came in from the Polytechnic College of Architecture
and Advanced Building Technology, and the North Staffordshire
Workers' E ducational Association. In addition, Price received a
letter from an administrator at the University of Keele, asking for
a copy of the Thinkbelt proposal:
I read with interest in The Sunday Ti.mes about your scheme

for a 'Think-belt'. If you have fuller details I would be grateful
for a sight of a copy. The press report makes no mention of
any connection between the scheme and Keele, and I hope
this is not because you think that Keele is 'too attached to
medieval origins' ! 71
The publication of Price's Thinkbelt plans began to attract the
attention of architects as well. Architect Richard Sheppard wrote
to Price to say:
I have read an account of your proposals for scrapping British

Railways and turning them into universities instead. I found it
fascinating, practical, salutary and funny-the self importance
of the academic mind would never recover from this blow.72
Critics began to discuss the Thinkbelt, and the reviews were mixed.
The project's challenge to the role of symbolic and fixed buildings
in architecture was one area of contention. A year after the initial
publication of the Potteries Thinkbelt plans, Reyner Banham
argued in "Flatscape with Containers" that the spectacularly
enormous dimensions of the new shipping containers entirely
redefined "monumentality" to mean something other than simply
large architectural symbols. 73 In the article, he noted that Price had

achieved a new "anti-monumentality" in the Think.belt, but what
exactly did Banham mean by anti-monumentality?
Although the Potteries Think.belt was enormous, its constituent
elements were relatively small and constantly shifting from place
to place. Even the large Transfer Areas and Crate housing would
become insignificant specks in the vastness of the landscape of
the Potteries. In all likelihood, the visitor to the Think.belt might
be disappointed upon arrival, or perhaps unsure if he or she had

actually arrived. There were no grand gestures, no legitimising
symbols of government power or monumental cultural institutions .

There were only modest industrial buildings and a few 'mobile
units' trundling along the rails. For all its size, the Think.belt was
adamantly anti-monumental, and this-in addition to its unsentimental
application of modern technologies-was precisely what Reyner
Banham appreciated about it. It defined a new kind of architectural
scale, not of large buildings , but of a vast field of objects and
events . Banham felt that Price's Think.belt had demonstrated that
vastness of architectural scale and need not entail symbolism,
monumental presence, or the pretensions of traditional public
institutions. To Price, the conventional role of architecture to provide
symbols of identity, place and activity in post-war Britain was
irrelevant and counterproductive (although his reclamation of the
industrial wasteland was arguably emblematic of the British post
industrial condition) .
However, in a
1967 article called "'La Dimension Amoureuse'
in Architecture", architectural theorist and early proponent of

semiology and structuralism George Baird took the Potteries
Think.belt to task for the same reasons for which Banham credited
it, that is, for its anti-monumentality.
Baird argued for a 'communicable', symbolic architectural code
of 'goals' , 'values', and 'ideals' from a Structuralist point of view.74
At that time, semiotics was becoming fashionable in London's
intellectual circles , and Baird was especially interested in applying
semiotic notions of meaning to architecture . He claimed that the
failure of architects, such as Price, to adopt this symbolic, "values
laden'', dimension amoureuse, "poses . . . a dramatic threat to our
traditional concepts of society".75 He wrote, for example :
The Thinkbelt . . . i s designed in such a fashion a s t o eschew
communicativeness whatsoever. The fantastic effort in this
case has been devoted to establishing a maximally anonymous
servicing mechanism, rather than building in the traditional
sense at all. And the anonymity of that servicing function
is intended to be so complete as to avoid the buildings' standing
for any particular 'values' at all. Indeed, the designer's
rejection of 'values' is such that he has attempted to expunge
them not only from his building, but also from the education
it houses. 76
Baird even suggested that the "value-free" lack of symbolism

of the Thinkbelt would turn students into mere objects:
If education became a service, and made no claims on
its students' values, then it would also be true that
the student could make no claims on that education's
values. The student would himself become merely an
unconscious part of the servicing mechanism.77
Baird must have concluded that this argument made

no sense, because he omitted it from the version of the
essay published in Meaning in Architecture, which he
and Charles Jencks coauthored in 1969.78 Baird claimed,
however, that the Thinkbelt did possess a strange sort of
anti-symbolism:
Insofar as that architecture [the Thinkbelt] did penetrate
[the students'] awareness-and that would surely occur
to some extent, in spite of the designer's intention, since
the alternative would constitute sensory deprivation
then that architecture would present him with the most
concrete symbol we have yet seen of bureaucracy's
academic equivalent, the 'education-factory' .79
So, Baird managed to find symbolism (however perversely)

in the Thinkbelt after all. He continued his diatribe
against the Thinkbelt, concluding with an odd perceptual
phenomenological twist to his 'structuralist' argument:
At the Thinkbelt . . . there is a failure to come to terms
with the building having an inevitable perceptual impact
of some intensity, which results in a contemptuousness
as distasteful as the paternalism it was intended
to supplant.80
In the later version of '"La Dimension Amoureuse' in

Architecture", Baird substantially toned down his caustic
criticism of the Thinkbelt and eliminated the last passage.
Baird may have come to realise that his dismissal of the
Thinkbelt might come to be seen as regressive and reactionary.
In general, Baird faulted the Thinkbelt for failing to signify
anything in particular, or at least, anything noble and
culturally sig:ni.ficant. Baird may have been correct in saying
that such architecture does pose a threat to "our traditional
concepts of society" .81 However, what he does not mention
is that "traditional concepts of society" in post-war Britain
had already been substantially dismantled. What he failed to
appreciate is that Price intended the project's meaning to be
open, and that part of the project's intended meaning was in
fact that conventional messages about education and public
institutions were not worth signifying.
In defence of Price, Banharn responded to Baird's article, retorting

that the architect:
. . . has recently been attacked, not by some doddering old
architectural knight, but by one of the profession's most
esteemed younger intellectuals, George Baird, arch-priest of the
cult of 'values' (rather than human service) in architecture.
According to Baird, the Thinkbelt's avoidance of showy
monumentality (for which 'structuralism' is the current flip
synonym) will lead to practically every fashionable evil in the
book, from contemptuousness to bureaucracy (read all about
it, if you can stomach the prose 'style' , in the June issue of the
JoUI'naJ of the ArchitectUI'aJ Association) .82
Apart from Baird, the Thinkbelt was received politely, if not

sceptically. Price would later admit that the Thinkbelt "wasn't
a roaring success".83 Neither the government nor most of Price's
contemporaries appreciated his sharp insights and the implicit
critique of the British higher educational system, nor did the project
receive the critical attention of the Fun Palace.
Although Lord Kennet had issued the initial challenge to Price to
come up with the Potteries Thinkbelt, neither he, nor the Ministry
of Housing and local government, nor any other government office
expressed any interest in the plan. His initial charge to Price had
been in the form of an informal wager by a private citizen, rather
than a contractual brief on behalf of the Ministry. Kennet reported
that by the time Price had :finished the Thinkbelt in 1966, his duties
at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government left him no time to
study the proposal, and he does not recall ever having seen it. Herein
lies one of the persistent problems with both the Potteries Thinkbelt
and the Fun Palace. While Price spent a great deal of time planning
and fiddling with designs, he failed to establish a viable client or
any other institutional base for the projects. He had clearly not kept
Lord Kennet apprised of the progress of the Thinkbelt, nor had he
consulted him after that first meeting. Price seems to have preferred
to work in tranquil isolation. As 'practicable' as his ideas might have
been, this approach doomed them to remain on paper, while works of
more determined (if less visionary) architects have been realised.
The fact that the Thinkbelt coincided with the launching of the
Open University did not improve Price's chances. He first made public
his plans for the Potteries Thinkbelt in June 1966, three months after
Jennie Lee had published the Open University manifesto:
We shall establish the University of the Air by using TV and
radio and comparable facilities, high grade correspondence
courses and new teaching facilities. This open university will
obviously extend the best teaching facilities and give everyone
the opportunity of study for a full degree. It will mean genuine
equality of opportunity of study for millions of people for the
first time .84
230
M a.ny of the people whom Price might have interested in his novel
t ucational ideas were now otherwise preoccupied with the Open
r l 1 1 iversity, which overshadowed the Thinkbelt considerably and
1 1.ppeared to be a more practical solution to similar issues and
1 :oncerns for British education.
The absence of fixed buildings in the Thinkbelt may have been
1 1<
111 Ice s response to the lack of genuine cultural consensus and
1) hesion (as Wells Coates defined it), but the public at large and
p rticularly those in positions of authority, had little interest
I n Price's critique of the paucity of values worth signifying in
1 :ontemporary British society. Moreover, the advanced technical

1 :ornplexity of the PTb may have seemed too far-fetched to a public
1 1 1 1 familiar with computers.
Although information technology was still in its infancy at
L i t e time, Price's paradigm for the Potteries Thinkbelt was the
c :omputer, capable of being reprogrammed and becoming an
c
1 n t,Lrely different instrument at different times and situations,
lopeniling on changing requirements. What he failed to anticipate
I 1 1 his insistence on mobility is that the .fluidity and transformability
1 1' computer technology itself would permit flexibility even in
L i t e most conventional of structures. Long before the advent of
oumputers, eould not Mies' empty boxes have been considered
J ust as programmatically '.flexible' as Price's moving machines?

Open University, on the other hand, circumvented the need
l e l' buildings or even for a campus. Like his preoccupation with
r ybernetics in the Fun Palace the obsession with mobility and
ox pendability that Price shared with Banham may have been the
wrong technological road to follow, and may have been closer to
I.I) archaic mechanical paradigm of the Futurists than to that of
' l'h
I . I t o virtual 'machine' suggested by cybernetics and computers.
'I'he fluid, non-fixed layout of the Thinkbelt may have ensured
1 1.
1 1 igh degree of adaptability to the rapidly changing needs of
1 11 I ucation. But, do .fluid minds necessitate a physically fluid

11. 1 chitecture ? Or, was Price ultimately using mobility as a trope
Lo oxpress the intellectual condition of post-industrial society?
' I ' l l Open University's approach to mass-education was in many
1 '< 11::1 pects a more practical and prescient application of electronic
t.1 1<Jl nology. For all its computerised control systems the Thinkb elt
1 1 1.1 1 1 relied on mechanical mobility, on railways and cranes. The
( l pe n University was equally mobile, yet its mobility was virtual,
1 1t it. literal and mechanical, and it did not rely on tracks, machines,
1 1.11d cranes. Unlike the Thinkbelt, it was not tied to any specific
graphical location where people must congregate. Although the
' itmpus' of the Thinkbelt was vast, the 'virtual campus' of the Open
l / 1 1 l versity was infinite. A simple television would instant]y convert
11 ny space, anywhere, any time, into a part of the Open University
11 1 H I could reach many more people at their own convenience.
lrom a formal perspective, the decentralised architecture of
t . t i o ' l'hinkbelt anticipated the trend in art towards the large site
1 1 1 1 1Lf1llations of artists such as James Turrell and Robert Smithson.

The Potteries Thlnkbelt 23 1
In her 1985 essay, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field", Rosalind

Krauss described the dispersal of the post-Renaissance 'monument'
within the negative ontology of Postmodern sculpture.85 She
outlined how Minimalist sculptors challenged traditional notions
of art by rejecting the centralised object in favour of a new and
anti-monumental spatiality, created in the tension between
discrete and dispersed elements . The Potteries Think.belt might
similarly be thought of as a dispersed architectural field that
dissolved traditional notions of the object-building as the sine
qua non of architecture. Yet, the Think.belt was more than a formal
challenge to traditional architecture. It also confronted normative
social and educational patterns. Ultimately, Krauss' formalist
understanding of art as a hermetic and apolitical discourse
fails to account for the deeply social and political dimensions
of such architecture.
Yet, in establishing a precedent for architecture as a field of
elements rather than as a singular, monumental object-building,
Price's work opened the way for other architects, such as Rem
Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi. Their 1986 designs for the Pare
Rem Koolha:u
Pare de I. Vlllette
competition entry, 1 986
hn;igo courtesy of O M A
de la Villette competition were founded on notions pioneered by

the Potteries Thinkbelt, and much of their concept derived from
Price's ideas . For example, Koolhaas' rationale for his design
emphasised change and indeterminacy as key factors:
During the life of the park, the programme will undergo
constant change and adjustment. The more the park works,
the more it will be in a perpetual state of revision. Its 'design'
should therefore be the proposal of a method that combines
architectural specificity with programmatic indeterminacy.
In other words, we see this scheme not simply as a design
but mostly as a tactical proposal to derive maximum benefit
from the implantation on the site of a number of activities . . . .
The underlying principle of programmatic indeterminacy as
a basis of the formal concept allows any shift, modification,
replacement, or substitution to occur without damaging the
initial hypothesis.86
Rem Koolhaas
Pai-c de la Villette
competition entry, I 986
Koolhaas' scheme echoes
the programmatic
palimpsest of
overlapping and
simulataneous activities
that characterised both
the Fun Palace and
Potteries Thinkbelt.
Image co ur-tesy of O M A
The passage might aJmost have been written by Price about

the Potteries Thinkbelt . Tschumi's description of his Pare de la
Villette design could likewise apply to the Thinkbelt, but aJso bears
striking resemblance to Koolhaas' statement above: "La Vill ette is
a term in constant production, in continuous change; its meaning
is never fixed but is aJways deferred, differed, rendered irresolute
by the multiplicity of meanings it inscribes."87 Tschumi's concept of
architecturaJ 'disjunction' is similarly applicable to the Thinkbelt:
The concept of disjunction is incompatible with a static,
autonomous, structural view of architecture. But it is
not anti-autonomy or anti-structure; it simply implies
constant, mechanical operations that systematically
Bernard Tschuml
Pare de la Vil lette
competi tion entry, 1 986
I mage courtesy of
Tschumi architects
produce dissociation in space and time, where an

architectural element only functions by colliding with
a programmatic element.BB
Conversely, the constant, mechanical operations, to which Tschumi

refers, seem better to describe the Thinkbelt rail cars, endlessly
shifting in response to the changing programme, than the static
'folies' at La Villette. Of course, unlike the Thinkbelt, the Pare de
la Villette was not a socially motivated rethinking of industry, and
its 'industrial artifacts' are mere 'folies' in an entertainment park.
The vastness of the Potteries Thinkbelt also anticipated Koolhaas'
concept of 'Bigness', an architectural condition where beyond
a certain size, the whole "can no longer be controlled by a single
architectural gesture, or even by any combination of architectural
gestures".89 The indeterminate nature of the Thinkbelt likewise
foreshadowed a similar characteristic of Bigness: "A paradox of Bigness
is that in spite of the calculation that goes into its planning-in fact,
through its very rigidities-it is the one architecture that engineers
the unpredictable."9 Koolhaas' recent thoughts on the problem of
the "slowness" of architecture-specifically that the rapid pace of
programmatic change requires a provisional, indefinite and incomplete
architecture-also bears the imprint of Price's concept of
improvisational design.91 The affinities between Price's architectural
ideas and the subsequent thinking of Koolhaas and Tschumi are
hardly coincidental, since Price taught at the Architectural
Association during the 1970s, when Koolhaas was a student there,
and while Tschumi was an AA unit master.
The scale of reuse and reclamation in the Thinkbelt also
invites comparison to the vast waterfront renovation projects
in Boston and Baltimore of the 19 70s and 80s. Whlle the malls
and condominiums in those redevelopments created excellent
opportunities for private investment, the Thinkbelt could offer
little in the way of straightforward dividends. Clearly, the Potteries
Thinkbelt would have required state finance and control, and the
returns on capital investment would have been realised gradually
as social and economic benefits on a regional and national scale,
not as short-term investor profits. Moreover, the Thinkbelt was not
a commercial shopping centre or converted loft, but actually touched
on productive aspects of industry in a changed economy. Price's
radical proposal to transform obsolete industries into sites of post
industrial activity is something that none of these projects would
ever achieve . Whlle the mobile and technical aspects of the Thinkbelt
have had little effect on subsequent architecture, the project's most
innovative feature was its novel redeployment of the industrial
landscape into an entirely new kind of industry. Nonetheless, it is
much easier to win support for less radical commercial development
than for a non-profit centre of education and entertainment.
The Potteries Thinkbelt is perhaps closest in spirit to the recent
Ruhr Valley reclamation project. Germany's industrial Ruhr Valley,
which stretches 225 kilometres through North Rhine-Westphalia,
suffered the same decline as the North Staffordshire Potteries. Once
the heart of German coal and steel production, in the 1970s it became
a landscape of disused smokestacks, coke ovens, and rusting rail
lines. In 1989, the Westphalian government began an initiative called
235
IBA (similar to that already in place in Berlin) intended to reclaim

and redeem the ruined landscape through innovative architectural
projects. Landscape architect Peter Latz won the design competition
for the first phase-the conversion of an old steel mill outside the
city of Duisberg. Latz created a
568 acre post-industrial landscape,
in which the old slag heaps and ruined blast furnaces remained as
the matrix of a new park-like setting. Like the monumental ruins
of the old Roman Baths of Caracalla, old factories have been turned
into open air concert halls, rail lines are now bicycle paths, and
the canals and gasometres are used by a local scuba club . Nature
continues to reclaim the derelict structures, creating a post-industrial
fusion of ecology and the aesthetic of technological decay. There are
differences, of course: Latz's project is about entertainment and
leisure, while the PTb focused on learning and technology. Yet both
projects seeked to redeploy the symbols of a dead industry in order
to enhance the post-industrial economy.
The old landscape of the industrial revolution had been reclaimed
by entropy and decay, becoming a new 'nature', which served as the
foundation for Price's interventions. In building atop the ruins of
Britain's industrial past, Price did not propose to renew, reclaim,
revitalise, or reforest, nor did he intend to rehabilitate the wasteland
into the romantic ruins of a nostalgic age of steam and smoke.
Struktvrele1J1en)e
236
Peter Latz + Partner

Plan of Landscape Park
Duisburg Nord, Ruhr
Val ley, G e rmany, 1 9 90
Image courtesy of Peter
Latz + Partner
His design was a supplement to the landscape, an intervention

creating a discourse of the ruined and the new. Once a centre of the
industrial heartland of Britain, now devoid of meaningful social
or economic activity-the ruined landmarks of the Potteries stood
as the empty signifiers of a lost industrial age, whose carpet of
significance has slipped out from under them, leaving them both
drained of immediacy and filled with absent potential.
Price's redeployment of the ruined industrial landscape of
the Potteries was a realisation and a metaphor of the post-war
transformation of Britain. The Potteries Thinkbelt was a microcosm
of Price's much larger vision for architecture and for England, not
limited to symbolically 'utopian' monuments and megastructures,
but instead an integrated system of economic, educational and
social relations and factors deployed within an interactive
architectural matrix. The shifting landscape of the Thinkbelt was
also a metaphor for a changing ideal of a restless utopian vision
of Britain's new post-imperial and post-industrial role in the world.
For all its size, there were no grand gestures, no legitimising symbols
of government power or monumental cultural institutions. The
'centre' of the Potteries Thinkbelt was absent, dispersed and deferred.

It was an architectural critique of hegemony and of the historical
metanarratives of British hierarchy, privilege, and monuments.
Peter Latz + Partn er,
Landscape Park,
D u i s burg
Nord, Ruhr Valley,
G e r m an y, 1 990
I m age c o u r t e s y o f
Peter Latz
+ Partn e r
Photograph b y
C h rista P a n i c k
The Potteries Thinkbelt 2 3 7
The Potteries Thinkbelt proposed a new, informational model

of architecture, a landscape/network whose algorithmic and fluid,
self-regulating behaviour mirrored the character of post-industrial
information technologies . The mobile units were like information
quanta, the switches and transfer stations like the logical gateways
of a vast computer circuit. The mobile landscape of the Thinkbelt
described a new architectural polemic of individual agency and
freedom as an alternative to the institutionalised collectivity of
grids and curtain walls characteristic of the architecture of the
Modern Movement.
Unlike the depleted utopias of the post-war era, the Potteries
Thinkbelt was not a sublimation into formalism, nor the deferred
future of some distant visionary ideal, but a palpable and potential
reality made possible through a recasting of obsolete systems of
production. The Thinkbelt bears strong similarity to the utopian
scope of some of Fuller's projects, as well as the contemporary
megastructural schemes of Archigram, Nieuwenhuys and GEAM.
Price's project, however, was not simply an architectural novelty,
but an all-encompassing proposal of utopian dimensions for
wholesale social and economic reconstruction. Price was sceptical
about the ability of architecture alone to be an effective agent
for such a broad transformation of the national topos. He
recognised that in addition to architecture, such a comprehensive
plan would also require the implementation of equally progressive
economic and pedagogical models. Therefore, his proposal included
radically new educational curricula, as well as new industrial
structures and methods.
The utopian appeal to scientific and technical education in
the Thinkbelt also suggests striking similarities between Price's
Potteries Thinkbelt and Francis Bacon's 1626 utopian novel,
New Atlantis.92 Bacon's utopia differed from Sir Thomas More's
utopia of a century earlier. More was concerned largely with social
reform through laws, religion, customs, and morals, while Bacon
sought to improve society through science. He proposed a new
epistemological model in his Templum Seculorum, which amounted
to a technical college, "instituted for the interpreting of nature and
producing of great and marvellous works for the benefit of men".
Price would have agreed with Bacon's opinion on contemporary
education: "In the customs and institutions of schools, academies,
colleges, and similar bodies destined for the abode of learned men
and the cultivation of learning, everything is found adverse to
the progress of science."93 In their respective proj ects, both Bacon
and Price proposed new modes of knowledge and enquiry which
favoured science while rejecting established systems of education
and thought.
This comparison is not to suggest that Price was somehow
following Bacon's example, nor that he was seeking to recreate
Bacon's utopia. What is significant is the fact that both Bacon and
Price confronted a crisis of knowledge at the time of paradigm
shift. In Bacon's day, this was the transition from a Medieval world
238
view of the sanctity of received knowledge and ancient authority,

to an era of modern methods of scientific inquiry. Bacon challenged
the pervading sense of 'Cosmic Decline', the idea that while the
ancients had enj oyed the vigour and keen wit of humanity in its
youth, contemporary society had entered its miserable old age,
its faculties and intellect declining.94 For Price, the crisis was the
paradigm shllt from the structures and traditions of industrial and
imperial E:qgland to the post-industrial, post-imperial era of the
early information age in Britain.
What remains provocative and unique about Price's Potteries
Thinkbelt is his recycling and reuse of the obsolete industrial
detritus of a bygone epoch as the basic infrastructure for a post
industrial age. More than architectural form, it is this idea that
remains most intriguing.

The Potteries Think Belt CEDRIC PRICE

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The Potteries Think Belt CEDRIC PRICE

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T he Potteries

The Fun Palace helped to establish Cedric Price as one of Britain's

oontrolled interaction and strong social objectives. Like the Fun

universities that sprang up in the post-war years. British industry

1 10Hed a significant challenge not only to traditional culture, but

The Potteries Thlnkbelt 197

In the early 1960s, the Universities Grants Commission also

Price had long shown an interest in education and was directly

198 The Architecture of Cedric Price

an activity, benevolently controlled and directed by an elite

pointed out that "industrial and professional education

The lack of awareness of both the correct scale and intensity

" Hocial relevance" referred to the changing demography of

Price shared Drew's valuation of the role of science in higher

In his 1966 article, "Life Conditioning" (which accompanied the

In addition to his complaints about recent academic architecture,

to produce his plan for the Thinkbelt. He immediately thought of

The Potteries Thinkbelt 201

The Architecture of Cedric Price

WOOD & SONS ofBURSLEM

This area of North Staffordshire-including the Potteries

Price found higher unemployment in the Potteries "than in

The Potteries Thinkbelt 203

was employed in pottery making, while most of the rest worked in

.\ TlfR1JS Rvt: \'J.EW OH Tfflt 'POTTY.IU

l hc \\ l..., I \lidhrnd' (,J, Hu.utJ

h1 hnin1I .. chi...,. ,n 'rr in

nr c;u.. In Ind ''IM.'t".11\ "hkh 1.. :.n11ll11hh

The Potteries Thlnkbelt 205

industrial wasteland of ruined factories, rusting machinery, and

Price underscored the misplaced priorities of the new University

To Price, advanced education needed to be knitted into the social

Site Plan of the Potteries

PTS= Potteries Thinkbelt

- PTB service roads

- PTB service railways

PTB Iii public UH

PTB uoe only

with small siding

c:::::::J housing areH

filHII transfer areas

faculty/ industry shared 1rea

To Bitmingliam lon.don (M6)

The Potteries Thinkbelt

Department of E ducation and Science. Her intention was to turn

The Architecture of Cedric Price

and oriented towards science and technology: a kind of cross

As evidence of the need for indeterminacy and flexibility,

Price based this laboratory of indeterminate architecture on

as the basic infrastructure for the new technical 'school'. Mobile

soon become the major industry of every developing country,

Price also sincerely hoped that the Thinkbelt would induce

The Potteries Thlnkbelt 2 1 1

and to reorientate and revitalise existing industries such as

Price repeatedly emphasised that in the Thinkbelt:

Here again, Price is in agreement with Dr Drew's proposal for

deliberate aim, the presentation of the results of their

research, freely and openly, to the people of the region, and

their natural resources might be harnessed and developed. 52

Besides provicling a radically new 'industrial' alternative to higher

Price saw the Thinkbelt as an opportunity for 'hot-house' research

2 1 2 The Architecture of Cedric Price

prototypes for a new sort of housing because they required

Price concluded that the Thinkbelt must be "large enough to involve