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Dialogic Criticism Cedric Price’s Design Columns 1975-1999Jim NjooAssociate Professor, École d’architecture de Paris-La Villette, TU Delft Department of ArchitectureFor the radical British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003), architecture was above all a social art. In a conversation towards the end of his life, Price characterised the essential role of architecture as that of creating “continuous dialogue” (Obrist, 2009: 68). Although Price was speaking about architecture in a broad sense, this idea of “continuous dialogue” could equally apply to Price’s architectural discourse. While Price is often celebrated as the architect of such seminal projects as the Fun Palace or the Potteries Thinkbelt, he was also a highly respected journalist, critic, lecturer, educator, and polemicist. Through his writings and lectures, Price sought not only to reach a broader audience but also to stimulate a sense of societal awareness and public debate within the architectural profession. My paper focuses on Price’s output as an architectural critic and more specifically the columns he wrote for the weekly UK architectural magazine Building Design during the 1970s to the 1990s.If architectural criticism can be recognised as playing a valuable role in mediating between architecture and public opinion, it can also be considered to perform an important mediating function within architectural discourse itself, that is, as a discursive practice situated somewhere between architectural theory and architectural journalism. Hierarchically speaking, architectural theory and journalism tend to represent the “high” and “low” registers of architectural discourse. Moreover, architectural theory, while often closely related to the practices of history and criticism, is rarely seen as a function of architectural journalism. Indeed many architectural historians and critics relegate the journalist to the role of a neutral agent or observer who simply records and communicates news and information without comment. But media theorists and historians would argue that reporters “make” stories and that the “making” of stories involves critical investigation and interpretation, even imagination (Schudson, 1996). For Price, this discursive grey zone between journalism and criticism provided an ideal forum from which to challenge the hierarchies of conventional architectural discourse and experiment new forms of public engagement. As a columnist responding regularly to current events and readers’ comments and inquiries, Price developed a form of “dialogic criticism” in which his various publics became active participants in the construction of meaning.My discussion begins by situating Price’s columns with regards to the problematic split between “theoretical” and “practical” approaches to architectural criticism and proposes to consider Price’s dialogic approach as a variant of what some scholars have termed “journalistic criticism” (Pousin, 1991; Stephens, 1998). If, as these scholars claim, the split between academic and journalistic criticism can be understood as a difference in terms of audience, and one which has notably contributed to the growing chasm between architectural theory and practice today, the question arises as to how to delineate and situate architecture’s professional audience which includes a wide range of actors beyond just simply architects. Should the professional public of architecture be addressed as a specialist audience with its own culture and language, distinct from academe yet similarly “autonomous”? Or, on the contrary, should it be assimilated to a general readership closer to the mind-set of journalist critics?With respect to the conceptual framework regarding “journalistic criticism” which I refer to, three key points of orientation have been important in framing my exploration of Price’s discourse. The first concerns the theoretical dimensions of journalistic criticism. While journalistic criticism may effectively be contrasted to the more “theoretical” criticism of academics who indeed often take a more philosophical or intellectual approach, I argue that journalistic criticism is not devoid of theoretical ambition and that there is a need I see to clarify the theoretical agenda of this kind of criticism; it is this theoretical dimension that I wish to make more explicit through the specific case of Price. The second point that I insist upon is the need to examine more closely the effects of mass media on criticism, not only from the perspective of art history and criticism (which evidently are fundamental sources for understanding the origins of architectural criticism in general) but also from the point of view of media history, that is to say, the information industry, which I argue is particularly important in the context of journalistic criticism. For example, in this paper I discuss Price’s early experiences in television and magazines, wherein he developed an interest in serial forms of discourse that he would eventually extend to column journalism. Serial form provided Price with an effective means to emphasis the importance of process and social interaction, and to come closer to the everyday life of his readers. A closer analysis of Price’s columns reveals how their form and content reflect larger historical developments in popular journalism and British society as well as personal themes like education, which are equally present in Price’s architectural designs. Finally, my third point returns to the issue of public engagement. While the split between academic and journalistic criticism may be understood as a difference in terms of audience, as I mentioned earlier, it would appear that in both camps the active participation of the “public” is not an integral or desirable part of the process (Stephens, 1998: 68-69). From this perspective, the study of Price’s dialogic approach in my opinion also presents a productive challenge to the narrow emphasis on authorship that tends to still underwrite discussions of architecture’s so-called “autonomy” with respect to public debate and the role of the architectural critic.Price treated public opinion as a necessary input into architectural design and the development of a critical practice. However he did not view this as being antithetical to the development of disciplinary “autonomy”. On the contrary, Price multiplied and differentiated his various publics: professionals and non-professionals, architects and non-architects, at times woven together and at other times held apart for comparison. By adopting a dialogic approach that aimed neither at synthesis nor consensus, Price admitted a degree of “autonomy” into his discourse that he adapted according to his different interlocutors. To explore Price’s “dialogic criticism” is to consider a possible alternative to the dichotomous relationship between architectural criticism and public debate.ReferencesOBRIST, Hans-Ulrich (ed.), 2009. Cedric Price and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Conversation Series, Cologne, Walther König.POUSIN, Frédéric, 1991. « Aperçus sur la critique architecturale », Espaces et sociétés, nos. 60-61 pp. 61-72.SCHUDSON, Michael, 1996. The Power of News, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.STEPHENS, Suzanne, 1998 [March]. “Assessing the State of Architectural Criticism in Today’s Press”, Architectural Record, no. 3, p. 64-69, 194.&#160;Jim Njoo is an architect, Associate Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-La Villette and a PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology where his research focuses on the discourse of the British architect, Cedric Price. His research has received the support of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the French Ministry of Culture and the Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design. He is also a member of the Gerphau Research Lab and a studio critic and lecturer at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and Rice University in Paris.&#160;Image captionCedric Price, "Starting Price" column, 5 April 1985, Building Design