An Travelling Architecture Exhibition

Connecting Schools, Cities and Pedagogies.

The Thinkbelt exhibition began as an idea to share the work of Cedric Price. But as it travelled from Aberdeen through the country to London, it became something more: an unfolding experiment of shared education, curation, and Cedric Price’s enduring legacy in design pedagogy. The mobile exhibition project reanimated the Potteries Thinkbelt, the 1960s proposal for a distributed university network in England’s post-industrial North. Like the original idea, the exhibition offered no fixed campus, and instead, it unfolded across seven architecture schools, each interpreting Price’s ideas through local context, student engagement, and archival materials. Together, they created a layered portrait of Price not only as a provocateur of flexible structures but as an architect of alternative future education.

At the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, the exhibition became a pedagogical gateway. Students contributed existing studio projects which could be reinterpreted through Price’s radical frameworks. The installation at the entrance to the school invited both formal analysis and informal student conversations, also inviting practices and City Council representatives, allowing the exhibition to be central for local debates about mobility and civic spaces.

At the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the exhibition included archival materials from Market Stalls to Fun Palace designs. It also adopted an international approach, incorporating contributions from students not just in Edinburgh but also in Palestine, Tangier, and the Netherlands. Mapping Price’s influence beyond the UK.

For the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow, the exhibition prompted an unexpected act of institutional memory, unearthing forgotten connections between Cedric Price and the school, including a 1971 campus lecture and an early 2000s student visit to Price’s London office. The exhibition housed within the school became a living bridge between generations of architecture inquiry, sparking renewed interest across departments, including the Fine Arts.

The University of Staffordshire offered historical resonance as the central point for the Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt. Though the exhibition footprint during the tour was modest, the site remains symbolically central. Students explored urban proximity through 15-minute city projects and discussions about broader community initiatives, reflecting Price’s ambition to democratise learning. 

Birmingham’s Thinkbelt intersected with visual arts through an artist-in-residence programme; the exhibition served as a spatial anchor for Political installations and student discussions on ethics. 

At the London Metropolitan University, together with the University of Westminster, the project became grounds for cross-institutional collaboration. The London iteration brought together undergraduate studios, master’s students, tutors, and practitioners. Themes of regeneration, reuse, and ephemeral architecture unfolded through student work and public discussions. The success could be found in the collaboration: London’s architecture schools coming together under one actual canopy.

Ultimately, the exhibition gained momentum due to its sheer variety, from mobile market stalls to inflatables, but mostly through conversation. Each venue left a spatial and educational imprint. Visitors engaged with Price’s work not only through drawings but also through experimentation and public critique: it became more than just a travelling archive: the Thinkbelt exhibition became a temporary place for learning and collaboration.