Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This program called for an architecture which was informal, flexible, un-
enclosed, and impermanent; the architecture did not need to be simply a re-
sponse to the program, but also a means of encouraging its ideas to grow and
to develop further. With an open ground-level deck and with multiple ramps,
moving walkways, moving walls, floors, and ceilings, hanging auditoriums, and
an overall moving gantry crane, the physical volumes of the spaces could be
changed as different usages were adopted. The kit of parts for these operations
included charged static vapor barriers, optical barriers, warm air curtains, a
fog dispersal plant, and horizontal and vertical lightweight blinds. In the Fun
Palace, no part of the fabric would be designed to last for more than ten years,
and parts of it for possibly only ten days.
A large number of people worked on the design of the Fun Palace, and
it is impossible to spell out in detail Pask's individual contributions. At the
level of content, the Cybernetics Subcommittee suggested dividing the Fun
Palace into six organizational zones, and “Zone one was dedicated to the vari-
ous types of teaching machines that Pask and his Systems Research had al-
ready developed.” Stanley Mathews describes the Littlewood-Pask cybernetic
theater as part of the overall conception of the Fun Palace (Mathews 2007,
114, 116).
58
Like the flicker machine at the Living City, the machines and the
theater can be seen as metonyms for the entire building.
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More broadly,
Pask's contribution appears to have been to see the Fun Palace on the model
of Musicolour—as an aesthetically potent environment that in its inner
Figure 7.22.
the fun Palace. source: landau 1968, 79, fig. 56.
