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T hinkbelt
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
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
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:
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Advertisement for
Wood & Sons, 1 95 5
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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MAD ELEY
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To Srafford, 81rn1ingh3m
207
209
will
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
o p p o s i te
Photomontage of the
M adeley Transfer Area,
Potteries Thinkbelt,
1 966
1 964
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
Architecture, M ontreal
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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
Transfer Area, Potteries
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
Architecture, Montreal
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
Architecture, Montreal
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
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Diagrammatic plan
and sections of Pitts Hiii
Transfer Area, Potteries
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
Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
Architecture, M ontreal
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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
Architecture, Montreal
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
Architecture, Montreal
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Diagrammatic elevations
and plans of battery
housi ng, Potteries
Thinkbelt, 1 966
Black ink on wove paper
34.2 x 44.S cm
Image courtesy of
Cedric Price Fonds,
Collection Centre
Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Montreal
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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
Architecture, Montreal
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The Potteries Thlnkbelt
223
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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
Canadien d'Architecture/
Canadian Centre for
Archi tecture, M ontreal
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Chart of l i fe span
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Cedric Price
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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
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
to supplant.80
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<
1) hesion (as Wells Coates defined it), but the public at large and
p rticularly those in positions of authority, had little interest
' l'h
1 1.
t.1 1<Jl nology. For all its computerised control systems the Thinkb elt
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
t . t i o ' l'hinkbelt anticipated the trend in art towards the large site
Rem Koolha:u
Pare de I. Vlllette
competition entry, 1 986
hn;igo courtesy of O M A
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
Bernard Tschuml
Pare de la Vil lette
competi tion entry, 1 986
I mage courtesy of
Tschumi architects
235
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
For all its size, there were no grand gestures, no legitimising symbols
of government power or monumental cultural institutions. The
Landscape Park,
D u i s burg
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