Master of Architecture Thesis Rice University 
designing for change in the twentieth century

[f21] 
Fun Palace, 1964,
Cedric Price
Axonometric view of the interior
[f22] 
Fun Palace, 1963
Cedric Price
Interior Perspective Sketch
[f23]
Northwick Hospital, 1962
John Weeks
First Site Plan
[f24]
Northwick Hospital, 1964
John Weeks
Master Site Plan
[f25]
Takara Beautilion, Expo 1970,
Kisho Kurokawa, 
Osaka
[f26]
Nakagin Capsule Tower, 1972
Kisho Kurokaw,
Tokyo
[f27]
Plug-in City Zoom-in, 1960-1974, 
Peter Cook, Archigram 
[f28]
Plug-in City, 1960-1974, 
Peter Cook, Archigram
Historically, the reaction to accommodating changes was the exploration of megastructures, metabolism, plug-in systems of flexibility. From London to Tokyo the interest of megastructures developed in their own way, attempting to increase user considerations and building lifespans while being environmentally conscious. Starting in the 1950s, architects such as Cedric Price, John Weeks, Richard Llewelyn Davies, Reyner Banham, Herman Hertzberger, Ezra Ehrenkantz, and Peter Cook, among others took a deep interest in developing architecture in ways that accommodated future change. Although never built, Joan Littlewood and Cedric Price’s Fun Palace [f21-22] was a proposed megastructure in which there was no definite pre-determined program. It was designed to allow for varying scales of program to take place, solely up to user discretion. While this project was designed with feasible construction assemblies to be realized, it never was. Public opinion fluctuated on the project as the design was adapted for various sites. Ultimately no site was selected and as a result it was never constructed.(14) Even if it had been constructed, part of Littlewood and Price’s design intention was that it would be deconstructed without leaving a trace behind. Almost as if there was a fear that somehow the megastructure would become obsolete, so removing it before it could was embedded in the design plan. Daniel Abramson discusses Price’s approach on avoiding designing architecture that would become obsolete along with his counterparts in his book titled Obsolescence.

The discussion of designing flexible spaces typically revolves around public spaces and programs that lend themselves to change, or have similar conditions. However John Weeks was focused on developing hospital design with future contingencies in mind. Weeks drove his hospital designs with the approach that the design is never finished. Not in such a way that the functional efficiency or assembly is not flushed out, but rather that the building must always be open to change and growth. When discussing Week’s work Abramson states, “Liberated from conventions of architectural authorship and functionalism, the designer alone “cannot determine what an indeterminate building will look like,” Weeks asserted.”(15) Northwick Park Hospital [f23-24] is specifically addressed and how certain facade elements are driven by engineers’ calculations, designed to best accommodate future changes.

Peter Cook’s Plug-in City and Kisho Kurokawa’s well known metabolism structures such as Takara Beautilion [f25] and the Nakagin Capsule Tower [f26] were also products of the widespread interest of designing for contingency of the time. Unlike Weeks’s hospitals and Kurokawa’s metabolist structures, the Plug-in City [f27-28]was not designed to be built. Rather it was applying the idea of a megastructure at an urban scale. Rather than a focus on a building’s function changing, the city would be accommodating the transition and change of how the city is circulated through. While this proposal expanded designing for change from the building to the urban scale, Kurokawa’s metabolist structures tightened this approach within the building scale. While his structures were still entire buildings, the mode of change was focused on the scale of a single room. Both Cook and Kurokawa, along with others, proposed designs that were composed as a kit of parts. Kits that work as a macro system with inserted parts allowing for the possibilities the system has taken into account. While these megastructure proposals hold a charm in their design, there are shortcomings embedded within the logic of a system. The system is its own limit, it can only accommodate what it has preemptively considered as possible futures. As stated in Adaptable Architecture, “Critics of accommodating change via moving components often disapprove of the predetermination of how a building can change. The argument against technical primacy is also expressed as implicit control over the user.”(16)

(14) Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), “Dangerous, Immoral, Ahead of Its Time.”
(15) Daniel M. Abramson, Obsolescence: An Architectural History, 90-91.
(16) Robert Schmidt III, Simon Austin, Adaptable Architecture: Theory and Practice, 31.

Feyza Mutlu
Master of Architecture Thesis
Rice University School of Architecture linkedin.com/in/feyza-mutlu
fnmutlu1@gmail.com
@fnmutlu1