Polyark ll: the Railway Project

Cedric Price’s Polyark programme of the 1970s achieved mythic dimension; the double decker bus that hosted the original was allegedly boarded by many more students of architecture than could actually have fitted – even allowing for standing room. Did the bus break down? Did it attempt to board a MacBrayne’s ferry in the Western Isles? Who was really on it? Does it matter?

The original Polyark can also be seen as a development of Price’s idea for the National School Plan, originally published in The Architects’ Journal in March 1966. The NSP was critical of the limitations of UK architecture education, and posited the idea of an amorphous but sharply responsive network of students and tutors, offering a broader, more vivid education. But the bus and road is replaced by the train and track.

Starting at the beginning of the new academic year in September 2009, Polyark ll reflects the original idea of design undertaken in transit, shared and argued over by a variable community of students and tutors, and operating in Price-preferred conditions of calculated uncertainty. Temporarily colonising the UK railway system, Polyark ll will involve eight schools of architecture between Canterbury and Glasgow, and travelling in a line that traverses the country from the Medway to the Forth. The eight schools of architecture are:

• Canterbury School of Architecture, University for the Creative Arts
• The Architectural Association
• London South Bank University
• Birmingham City University
• de Montfort University, Leicester
• University of Lincoln
• Liverpool University
• University of Strathclyde, Glasgow