Constantly challenging and questioning, Price (1934-2003) overturned the notion of what architecture is by suggesting radical ideas of what it might be in witty and irreverent projects, drawings, lectures and essays. He saw the role of an architect as being that of asking the right questions and the role of architecture as being “to enable people to think the unthinkable”. This exhibition, organised by the Design Museum in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, will present his vision to a new generation.

Cedric Price was born at Stone in Staffordshire in 1934 to an architect father, AJ Price, who worked for the firm which built the Odeon cinema chain. After graduating from Cambridge University and the Architectural Association, Price lectured at the AA and worked for the architects Maxwell Fry and Denys Lasdun before founding his own practise in 1960 with a commission to design an Aviary for London Zoo together with Lord Snowdon and Frank Newby.

As well as presenting Price’s most important projects together for the first time, this exhibition will deconstruct their development. It will focus on the early 1960s projects – the Aviary, Fun Palace, Robert Fraser Gallery and Potteries Thinkbelt – as well as the 1971 Inter-Action Centre in north London, the 1976 Generator in Florida and 1984 South Bank project in which Price anticipated the location of the London Eye culminating in the 1997 Magnet scheme.

Cedric Price built so little that his reputation – and influence – is chiefly based on the radicalism of his un-built ideas. This exhibition will bring them to life, by exploring the thinking and working practise that imbued Price’s architecture with what he defined as the essential qualities of “doubt, delight and change”.