The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) presents What About Happiness on the Building Site" On view in the CCA?s Octagonal Gallery until 14 May 2017, the exhibition emphasizes the social role and responsibility of the architect by rethinking traditional field practices and pursuing strategies to initiate social progress through critical research, new tools and experimental attitudes.
The exhibition offers a reading of the early 1970s McAppy report, a witty proposal by the British architect, thinker and radical innovator Cedric Price (1934?2003). The two-volume report combined with a Portable Enclosures Programme (PEP) proposed how to improve labour conditions, assuring happiness and well-being, both mental and physical, for employees by prioritizing a low-stress, boredom-free building site. In 1973, following the strikes that beset the British construction industry during the early 1970s, Alistair McAlpine commissioned a design program for his construction company, Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons, that aimed to increase production efficiency and improve labour relations. McAlpine, a friend of Cedric Price and a prolific businessman, also financed the London art and architecture gallery, Art Net, which was founded by Peter Cook in 1974. Art Net would become an informal anchor for the debate about architecture in the following years.
Cedric Price accepted McAlpine?s design challenge ?based on the assumption that the construction industry in general is in a bad state? a...