Max Bouttell

Adaptive Architecture: The Groovy Inheritance of Neoliberal Architecture and
Urbanism

Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University

Supervisors: Prof. Cyrus Mody, Dr. Jacob Ward

Background

I hold a BA in International Relations with International Experience (first class) from the
University of Sheffield, an MSc in Political Science (cum laude; specialization in political
theory) from the University of Amsterdam, and an MA in Philosophy (cum laude;
specialization in the philosophy of the humanities and the social science) also from the
University of Amsterdam

Content

Responding to an increasing distrust of state-led urbanism, its material culture, and
the experimental arts’ valorisation of openness and indeterminacy, from the mid-1950s
English avant-garde architects drew on sciences such as cybernetics to design adaptive
buildings and urban environments. Cedric Price’s unbuilt Fun Palace, perhaps the most
famous project of this movement, was to be a megastructure without a prescribed function. It
would deploy information and engineering technologies to reconfigure itself according to the
changing demands of it’s changing occupants. England’s first architectural avant-garde
followed their continental predecessors by engaging in cutting-edge debates in science and
art. But the revolutionary zeal characteristic of pre-war avant-gardes was replaced by a
growing interest in policy, including a consequential contribution to the theorisation of
enterprise zones. It is difficult to square this legacy with the avant-garde’s psychedelic
imagery and anti-hierarchical visions, a problem compounded by the surprising absence of
any focused work on this movement. This PhD project will provide the first biography of
England’s first architectural avant-garde. It will explore the interrelated influence science and
art on these architects’ visions for the built environment and their proposals to reform it. In
doing so, this project will contribute to a broader literature concerned with the histories of
counterculture, cybernetics, and neoliberalism, going beyond those accounts which suggest a
conceptual ‘family resemblance’ to examine the ideas and practices of an understudied cast of
actors who brought these histories together.
This project is supported by NWO under the 2024 PhDs in the Humanities Scheme.

Publications

Bouttell, M., & Freyberg-Inan, A. (2024). The ultimate political question? Realism and
omnicide. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1–25.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2024.2402120