At the Royal Academy summer show, architecture and art combine as never before

The Royal Academy summer show (aka the institution's Summer Exhibition) has a unique take on architecture this year. Co-ordinated by Farshid Moussavi – the first architect to do so since Eva Jiřičná in 2013 – the show is special for the way in which architecture has been mixed in with the artworks at this famous annual open event. Whereas media produced by architects have traditionally been granted a separate space, Moussavi took the decision to integrate architectural representations (models, drawings, sketches and reliefs) together with the display of prints, photographs and paintings produced by artists.

Walking through the Royal Academy summer show with Farshid Moussavi

The effect of mixing work at the Summer Exhibition, held every year without exception since 1769, certainly underlines the technical skills of the selected architects. It also shows how they are addressing similar ideas as artists, particularly about the evolving relationship between man, culture and nature. Although the show has always had an eclectic quality, due to its open submission process, it has generally kept architectural works separate from art. From 1811 architectural drawings were shown in the Library and from 1931 more or less onwards there was a dedicated architecture gallery. In 2025, with the work mixed together, each room has a greater character as its curator can be more thematically or aesthetically led, rather than simply grouping types.

It is successful, and Moussavi thinks that her approach should be undertaken not just as an ongoing strategy for the Summer Exhibition but also throughout the Royal Academy’s exhibition programme. 'It needs to be done at many levels. I think it is to do with the summer exhibition but it's also all exhibitions. Exhibitions should include architecture as part of the art exhibitions whenever possible,' she states. A Van Gogh exhibition might also feature the architecture of Arles, she offers as an example.

Nor is it just architecture that has been mixed in with art.  'Normally the print category and the print makers insist on being in a room of their own. And there is a predominance of them in a couple of places because they insisted, but I've intentionally put prints next to photographs in some places,' says Moussavi. The Large Weston Room, curated by Helen Sear is particularly striking for its thematic strength. Dedicated to images of the countryside both bucolic and threatening, one wall of the room is covered by Des Hughes’ chain-link-fence wallpaper, upon which are hung pictures like Anna Fox and Alison Goldfrapp’s photographs from the series Country Girls, night-time shots of isolation and unease. On the other side, Anthony Eyton’s double oil paintings, both called Outside The Door, offer an image of nature as consolation just out of reach.

The show is still dominated by art. The room that Stephanie McDonald from 6a Architects has curated with her partner Tom Emerson contains a higher number of architectural pieces compared to other rooms, a large model of their renovation of Tate Liverpool, for example. MacDonald says that of the 18,000 works submitted, only 300 were architectural and, in future, more should be encouraged. 'People need to know that they can and they should,' she says. As it stands, the big moments in the show, although curated by Moussavi and her team, are still produced by artists – Tim Shaw’s neo-pagan sculpture The Mummer, standing before Antonio’s Tarsis’ fiery red drape made from match boxes, for example.

The more subtle effect on the architectural works is to lend them even greater aesthetic authority, such as is the case with Henley Halebrown’s digital render of a detail from their De Roosenberg community centre hung above Eva Rothschild’s more whimsical screen prints. The architecture lends the artwork purpose and, in turn, the architect's work, surrounded by art, reveals itself to be communicating far more values than simple construction instructions.

With the cash-strapped Royal Academy effectively mothballing the position of architectural curator and diminishing the department to a single member of staff, Moussavi’s proposition imagines how architecture might continue to have a vivid, purposeful contribution to make at the Royal Academy. ' I don’t know how there is any going back to be honest,' she says.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition runs 17 June – 17 August 2025, book tickets at royalacademy.org.uk