I have designed and coordinated at GSA the exhibition ‘Delightful Fun: A Cedric Price Thinkbelt for Our Times’ on the work of British architect Cedric Price. The exhibition’s centrepiece at The Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh School of Architecture (MSA) were two original market stall prototypes from the Drawing Matter Collection, designed by Price and never previously exhibited. Alongside these prototypes, a range of archival materials—including prints of original drawings, texts, ephemera, film extracts, and audio recordings—provides a glimpse into the diversity of Price’s practice and the interdisciplinary conversations that animated it.

The exhibition aimed at stimulating discussions about some of Price’s key themes in relation to selected pedagogies and practices at each school, such as the provision of user-centred designs that increase choice, encourage change, do more with less, facilitate easy assembly and disassembly, and create responsive designs that delight the communities they serve, among other design principles

For this reason and in parallel to the exhibition I have also organised and chaired a symposium which called for live presentations and discussions on a selection of pedagogies and practices, and everything in between. Contributions were meant to be inspired by the exhibition to stimulate discussions about some of Price’s key themes in relation to selected pedagogies and practices across GSA, such as the provision of user-centred designs that increase choice, encourage change, do more with less, facilitate easy assembly and disassembly, and create responsive designs that delight the communities they serve, among other design principles. Leading questions of the symposium included some of Price’s fundamental design questions: Who do we design for? Who designs architecture? How little needs to be done? For how long is it useful? How can time be made visible in our designs? What might designing for pleasure and delight mean today? In the spirit of Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt project, the symposium, alongside the exhibition, sought to disseminate, interrogate, collect, and share knowledge and to think with Price on how to embrace usefulness, timeliness, and delight as key architectural values today, and how these may outline a more permeable profession that responds to current environmental and social challenges. Guest keynote speakers were Dr. Ana Bonet Miro from ESALA, Edinburgh and Marc Cairns and Becca Thomas, directors at New Practice, Glasgow.