Audible Archives: Cedric Price
Although much of his work remained unbuilt, Cedric Price was a prolific architect and provocateur. His archives at the CCA include more than 20,000 of his “in head”, “in house”, “in action”, and “in retrospect” drawings—categories he explored in the 1975 Royal Institute of British Architects exhibition The Evolving Image.
Cedric Price, Sketches and notes on the “reason for drawings” and a statement on the “reason for architecture,” ca. 1970. Cedric Price fonds, CCA Collection, DR2004:1445:003. © CCA
Price often argued that drawings were the ultimate tool of communication, yet he was also a very active writer and orator. While his graphic and textual work has been well studied, his audio archive remains comparatively underexplored. An influential public figure, Price habitually carried a recording device—whether in the office, on the job site, or at the university— believing that his “chats were a manifesto in the making”. His approach to architecture was discursive and dialogical, and his archive contains the widest range of recordings in the CCA collection.
Audio guide for The Evolving Image exhibition, held at the Royal Institute of British Architecture, 1975
Audio recording of a lecture on shopping, ca. 1965
Audio recording of site visits in London and Munich, 1969
Spanning audio formats from the late 1960s to the 1980s, these recordings trace technological change and the evolution of Price’s rhetoric over time.
These audio recordings are part of Audible Archives, a display on view in our Hall Cases from 18 December 2025 to 18 October 2026 that brings attention to the place of sound in architectural research.
