‘If technology is the answer, what was the question?’ Cedric Price, 1966

The initial optimism that digital techniques from the 2000s might inculcate more anti-authorial, participatory approaches in architectural design has largely proven illusory. Open-source platforms, mass-customisation, and BIM now often deemed unscalable, unnecessary, or corruptible in a praxeomorphic , production-led building industry. Meanwhile, new technologies have developed rapidly - most prominently the bureaucratisation of BIM models as a collection of standardised products; and the use of machine learning to generate architectural images, drawings, and 3D models. Both, however, don’t appear to address clear social, environmental, or even architectural questions. We use them because we are obliged to, or simply because we can, and perhaps neither because we should.

Through examination of Cedric Price and John Frazer’s ‘The Generator Project’ (1976), the presentation draws parallels between this project’s automated and responsive building systems with today’s potentially participatory digital technologies (i.e. Augmented Reality, predictive building and behavioural software, co-creation platforms). Ultimately, asking whether a reappraisal of this project may point towards more sustainable and meaningful directions for a new ‘participatory turn’ in architectural design.