A medieval moodboard

Gabriel Annouka, senior designer

Certain books are so captivating that you can’t stop reading or thinking about them. In contemporary design, we obsess over the usual suspects: Swiss grids, sans-serifs, and radically clean layouts (yes, I’m complicit). But last weekend at Frieze Masters, I fell for something wonderfully un-minimal: the medieval books of hours.

Gold and silver leaf halos, hand-painted saints, margins blossoming with vines and mythical beasts – these were the Middle Ages’ daily devotionals, meant more for admiring than for reading: spirituality meets genuine art direction. Each one was a distinct, portable cathedral of pigment and vellum – delicate, sacred, and decadent.

They were said to be accessible at the time (that is, intended for laypeople), though mostly owned by privileged men of the medieval elite (Catherine of Aragon also had one). I must admit I wish I could own one myself – perhaps one day. It’s fascinating how these illuminated pages make our branding palettes appear a little anaemic. I left Frieze (mostly Masters) fully enchanted, already planning how to incorporate a little medieval embellishment into my next work – because even dedication, it turns out, looks better gilded.

A Singaporean spread

Sofia de la Cruz, travel editor

The best way to enliven an office routine? A glamorous new restaurant opening just next door. That’s been the case for us with the arrival of Cé La Vi, the acclaimed Singaporean import with outposts in Dubai, Taipei and Tokyo.

Perched atop the newly unveiled Renzo Piano Building Workshop glass cube, the restaurant crowns the 17th and 18th floors with sweeping vistas of the capital. A dedicated lift from the new public square whisks guests skyward, each floor revealing an ever-widening panorama before opening into Cé La Vi’s signature scarlet-hued world. Inside, a slick bar, dining space and terrace set the tone for what’s to come, with the top level soon to open as a lounge and private dining suite.

The menu comprises a confident medley of East Asian flavours and textures rooted in the brand’s Singaporean DNA. Dishes arrive with visual flourish and satisfying substance: highlights include delicately seared tuna tataki with pink peppercorn dressing, ideally followed by a bowl of Maldon-salted fries and a well-timed glass of champagne.

A sumo spectacle

Melina Keays, entertaining director

I’ve been to the Royal Albert Hall and witnessed sumo wrestling’s return to the UK for the first time in 34 years. It was a magnificent occasion, and, for the record, only the second time in history that an official sumo tournament (known as a bansho) has taken place outside Japan. Sipping delicious Hibiki whisky, seated in velvet splendour, I reflected that the Albert Hall seems almost to have been built to host such an event – its grandeur and rotund solidity reflect the features of sumo wrestling, and the great building perfectly encircles the round clay wrestling ring (dohyo) where the action takes place.

The tournament was a mesmerising and very beautiful combination of ceremony, balletic agility, skill, and brute strength – not to mention the thrill of the competition. I will be rattling the doors of the Albert Hall to get a seat next time elite sumo comes to town – hopefully soon.

A magical collab

Anna Fixsen, US editor

Love design history? I certainly do, and one of my enduring fascinations is the life and work of Mariano Fortuny, a Spanish-born, Venice-based design polymath who worked across textiles, lighting, production design and fashion during the early 20th century. Fortuny was so renowned that he was known as the ‘magician of Venice’. Though his design company has been operating for more than a century, it found a kindred spirit in a much younger one: L’Objet, the luxury home and lifestyle brand founded by Elad Yifrach in 2005. The two brands toasted to their latest collab at the Manhattan studio of Athena Calderone this week. The collection, which comprises jewel-toned glassware, Midas-touched plates, games and more, provided an opulent backdrop for the evening. A table, heaped high with glistening fruits and nibbles courtesy of chef Andy Baraghani, looked straight out of a Venetian School still life. Magician, indeed!

An upending exhibition

Anna Solomon, digital staff writer

For something unabashedly and authentically different, head to the Royal Academy for ‘The Histories’, a major retrospective of American artist Kerry James Marshall. His work feels so fresh, so defiantly his own, that I had to keep reminding myself I was in the RA – that bastion of British tradition.

Yet there’s no question that Marshall belongs there, among the greats who came before. His paintings are vast, unruly and crammed with references that ricochet from art history to civil rights, comics to science fiction. He moves effortlessly between portraits, still lives, near-monochromes, and electrifying twists on abstract expressionism and Afrofuturism.

Everything about them is bold – the scale, the colour, and, most of all, the presence. Marshall’s Black figures command every canvas, unapologetically occupying the space from which they’ve long been excluded. By remixing the tropes of Western art history, he rewrites it, inserting new heroes into its frames.

‘It’s a genuine Van Gogh landscape here. We’re right in grain-harvest time. There are no mountains or hills here to block the view, only big, huge fields. It’s powerful.’ So wrote 18-year-old Anselm Kiefer on 4 August 1963, visiting the Netherlands courtesy of a travel bursary allowing him to follow the footsteps and aesthetic sensibilities of Vincent Van Gogh. ‘Kiefer / Van Gogh’ at the Royal Academy seeks to recall those early observations by the German artist through his sketches and diary notes, alongside more recently created and larger works, and a small selection of Van Gogh’s to draw connections between the two artists.

Van Gogh died 73 years before Kiefer hitchhiked across the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, and though the teenager did find traces of Van Gogh in the encountered landscapes, villages, and people, he also felt real melancholy and loss for how the places had changed from the paintings he knew them by. The excellent, small exhibition booklet offers extracts from Kiefer’s diaries of the trip, including: ‘There are sheaves sitting on some fields (typical Van Gogh). But some of the sheaves have been mercilessly compressed by machines into rectangular solids … like gravestones. The wheatfield becomes a graveyard.’

Kiefer’s work has always dealt with such graveyards and absences. Born in 1945, he has been central within a generation of creatives – including poet Paul Celan, painter Gerhard Richter, and writer WG Sebald – who contended with German recognition of the Shoah (Holocaust), and documented the political, social, and cultural trauma that followed. His vast canvases, deep in texture and meaning, often portray wide rural landscapes punctured by a single pathway leading from foreground to distant horizon line, an invitation for the reader to enter a desolate terrain and join Kiefer on a melancholic journey.

The Royal Academy exhibition, edited down from a larger presentation recently spread across Amsterdam’s Van Gogh and Steelijk museums – is small by Kiefer’s standards. The first and last of the three rooms are dominated by classic, enormous Kiefer canvases. Recent works, presumably made by Kiefer deliberately for these Van Gogh comparison exhibitions, thematically and aesthetically draw connections, often extremely literally. Upon entering, visitors are confronted by The Crows (2019), one of Kiefer’s straight-path-cutting-through-embedded-straw works, with foreboding black birds filling the sky above – with direct lineage to Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows of 1890. Another Kiefer work, a 2007-14 woodcut collage of bowing sunflowers, with a male body lying, Ophelia-like, at their base, is beautiful but a little too on the nose. The Starry Night (2019) not only borrows the swirling nightscape motif, albeit re-rendered in straw, gold leaf, wood, wire, and emulsion, but even the title of Van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece.

While these allusions are not subtle, such sublime and oversized works are clearly the attraction for visitors to ‘Kiefer / Van Gogh’. Even though they seem to be Kiefer repeating his best-of, and throwing some Van Gogh into the mix, they are still captivating and all-consuming. But, it’s the centre room where scale and overt referencing are reduced, where more poetic and interesting connections can be found between the two artists.

A series of four graphite and ballpoint sketches by Kiefer capture anonymous landscapes that seem to not only be an attempt to record place, but also a personal style of mark making, one inspired by Van Gogh but not beholden to it, something he acknowledges himself in his own diary: ‘I still haven’t developed my own style. I keep ending up borrowing from Van Gogh, since I’ve studied his drawings in such detail.’ But such exercises, alongside the writing, are beautiful, and a welcome withdrawal from the enormity and intensity we have come to expect from a Kiefer exhibition.

Similarly, two portraits – one of 12-year-old Edith Causse in Arles, and one of Mr Dumont in Fourques – are far from perfect, but, through their awkwardness, quite revealing of a young artist clearly in love with his inspiration, Van Gogh, but wrestling to find his own voice. There is a delicate quality in the marks of charcoal, ink, and graphite in both his sketches and words that is too rarely seen in the immense exhibitions of Kiefer’s work, but it’s one that only makes the marks of the room-filling canvases more profound.

The Van Gogh works on display are not the most famous – there is no diptych of the two Starry Nights side by side, and there are no Sunflowers. This doesn’t matter much, these are images the world is overly familiar with and they are present even if not hung on the walls. The Van Gogh works that the curators, Julien Domercq and Natasha Fyffe, have placed in this centre room are less important but draw interesting resonance. An 1882 drawing of an unknown Dutch country road is small, but carries as much weight as Keifer’s huge works – a straight road disappearing into the horizon, two lonely figures, a crow waiting in the heavy skies, and wiry nature. All ingredients clearly picked up by Kiefer over his decades of work.

Another, Poppy Field, painted in the last year of Van Gogh’s life, 1890, is the kind of vortexing landscape Kiefer conjures, at first seemingly empty, but full of depth, history, life and death – the label also indicates the work as one recovered from Germany after the Second World War, possibly looted from Nazi victims, compressing in more Kiefer-adjacent meaning into a work already loaded with profundity.

Then there is another work from the same year, Snow-covered Field with a Harrow (after Millet), an oil painted by Van Gogh from his asylum and reimagining a Jean-François Millet rural, working landscape into one of cold despair, loss and abandonment. It has all the tropes Kiefer draws from – trauma, loss, flocking crows, a distant horizon, perspectival reach into the distance, and swirling forms conflating land and sky. In the centre, a broken plough.

The painting is less than a metre wide, and the layers of Van Gogh’s paint are only millimetres deep, but any visitor who gets up close, so they lose the ornate frame from their peripheral vision, might think they are looking deep into one of Kiefer’s enormous, deep landscapes. There are rich connections between Kiefer and Van Gogh, but it’s most acutely read not in the recent, enormous new works that shout, but in the more delicate, poetic observations within the smaller works by both artists, and Kiefer’s teenage diaries that have such rich, self-aware observations.

The 'Kiefer / Van Gogh’ exhibition is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London from 28 June - 26 October 2025, royalacademy.org.uk

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

For 2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner Livyj Bereh, it is significant to receive 'the understanding of the importance of our work and the recognition of us as a volunteering group'. The architecture collective's co-founder Kseniia Kalmus attended the winner’s announcement ceremony at London's Royal Academy of Arts last night (31 October) – an event that highlighted the Ukrainian studio's work and important efforts in rebuilding homes during the ongoing war in its country.

2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner: Livyj Bereh

Based in Kyiv and initially working on the left bank of the Dnipro River (which inspired the name of the organisation – Лівийберег/Leftbank), Livyj Bereh has so far restored the roofs of some 380 houses, across different regions in Ukraine, including Černihiv, Kyiv and Charkiv.

Beyond its critical, site-specific and hands-on support and architectural work within Ukraine, the studio also spearheads exhibition projects and events that help raise awareness around the war.

Tom Emerson OBE RA and Stephanie Macdonald OBE RA, of 6a architects and chairs of the 2024 RA architecture prizes jury, said: 'Livyj Bereh’s repair of roofs destroyed by the war in Ukraine provides homes, schools and hospitals, delivering an essential and urgent response to the survival of communities. Their use of modest black corrugated metal roofs produces an architectural act of collective care and resistance across the country, as powerful as any civic monument and documented with the unflinching eye of the greatest war art.'

Previous winners of the Royal Academy Dorfman Prize include Mexico-based Taller Gabriela Carrillo (2023), Wallmakers from India (2022), Beijing-based BCKJ Architects (2020), Boonserm Premthada from Bangkok (2019), and Iranian architect Alireza Taghaboni (2018).

royalacademy.org.uk

Of the whopping 1,710 works in the Royal Academy's 2024 Summer Exhibition, 211 of them are in just two galleries, curated by London-based collective Assemble. One feels like an industrial archive, the other evokes a creative studio. The Summer Exhibition always includes architecture, but this year, Assemble reaches beyond it to sample tools, processes, materiality and media from wallpaper to candles.

The RA’s 2024 Summer Exhibition and its architecture rooms

The RA’s theme for the whole show is 'Making Space', but as Assemble’s Kaye Song says, in Room VI, ’we flipped the theme and made it into Space Making’. Mirrors from last year’s show are also re-used, as Assemble co-founder Maria Lisogorskaya says, to ‘open the room up’. Despite its burgundy-painted walls, the use of steel shelving racks, pegboard screens and a stainless steel sheet repurposed as a plinth creates a workshop-like environment. Simultaneously, the space is an archive of architectural projects and curious objects.

The aggressive hydraulic claws in sculptor James Capper’s ‘Nipper Family’ make probably the most startling work in the gallery. Wall-mounted works include ‘Young Londoners’ London’, a grid of cast blocks mapping urban features by students of Open City’s Accelerate programme, next to ‘Cast Gallery’, a cabinet of exquisite models by architects Stanton Williams. Elsewhere, photographs cover subjects from working maker spaces and timber logging to the buildings of recently deceased high-tech architect Michael Hopkins. 

Hassell displays a model of its ‘Habitat Radiation Protection Zone’ for a base near the Moon’s South Pole using 3D-printed ‘tetrapods’. Eric Parry counterpoints a model of his redesigned 290m-high One Undershaft skyscraper with human figures and a wooden truss element beside it. 

Not everything has an architectural angle. A pottery work and montage of the Queen dancing with Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, is the subject of Elsie Owusu’s joyful Dancing Queen, while fellow architect Nigel Coates offers charming ‘Mini Chairs’ just centimetres high, in wire, plasticine, wax and bronze.

Different materials can be so attractive, it’s difficult to resist touching them – especially in the next room, the Central Hall. At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, Assemble commanded a similarly eight-sided classical domed space but, with Granby Workshop, they just tiled the floor. At the RA, Lisogorskaya says, ‘the space needed something vertical’. It is transformed by long hanging banners by Jessie French, who used tinted non-petrochemical polymer, and Shanelle Ueyama, whose materials include Japanese kozo paper, dried hog gut, bamboo husks and more.

Below them, there’s another eclectic mix, including a trolley, bowls and terrines in fantastic stone and a bronze cast of Diplodocus vertebrae by Structure Warehouse. High on a wall is ‘Tufting Tests’, incorporating wool and cotton yarns, by Material Institute of New Orleans, with whom Assemble has long collaborated. The same colours in Anthony Whishaw’s enigmatic painting Sundown IV appear above it, in patches that Assemble daubed around the walls with left-over paint. Assemble members themselves contribute studio works, including an exquisite maquette for the façade of a workshop.

Assemble has dissolved any silo mentality separating architecture from other disciplines, and its celebration of creative processes chimes with the trend to recognise and foster the craftsmanship and processes of making. Its two rooms are Summer Exhibition must-sees.

The Royal Academy of Art's Summer Exhibition runs from 18 June – 18 August 2024

assemblestudio.co.uk 

royalacademy.org.uk

Following a surgical, five-year-long refresh, the Royal Academy Schools in London, have unveiled their new home – courtesy of David Chipperfield Architects (also behind the Royal Academy Arts' expanded campus in 2018), who worked with heritage specialists Julian Harrap Architects towards a delicate redesign of the education institution's main base on Piccadilly. The buildings, now to be called The Julia and Hans Rausing Campus as a nod to the lead gift that made this important restoration and reimagining possible, have now received the art students who have been invited this week to occupy their new home and work on-site towards the end-of-year shows that approach. 

Royal Academy Schools: a delicate refresh

With the RA Schools, DCA took its signature, gentle and respectful approach in giving the formerly cramped and tangled studio spaces a much-needed makeover - while ensuring the buildings' - and function's - character is not lost along the way. To this end, indeed the redesign feels gentle - 'you might not realise any work has been done,' the architects say. Yet it brings strong clarity to the overall complex, removing partitions and mezzanine floors, adding space - including a small new build, glulam-roofed extension off the architecture studio - and rendering the entire school now fully accessible by removing unnecessary level changes and adding accessibility measures where needed. 

As the Schools spread across the RA's two buildings, Burlington House, and Burlington Gardens, there is a strong north-south axis to their masterplan. This was counteracted by the architects' confident tackling of the east-west axis, as they not only refreshed the Cast Corridor that runs along it, but also placed key communal functions, such as the canteen and library in parallel to it too. 

Meanwhile, the studios have been redesigned and subtly uncluttered, now feeling taller, brighter and airier. The Courtyard is also now open to the school staff and students, where they can not only get fresh air but also admire the bridge that connects the two main RA campus buildings. 

Eliza Bonham Carter, curator and director of the Royal Academy Schools, said: 'The RA Schools provides a free, independent programme invested in artistic development at postgraduate level. A space for study and art making, committed to the questions that arise from making art now. This renovation of the RA Schools makes it fit for the years to come and provides outstanding conditions for our students. An art school in Burlington House on Piccadilly is the clearest possible signal of the RA’s commitment to the teaching and practice of art.'

'A healthy education, like a healthy diet, should include variety. This requires the opportunity to encounter a wide range of thinking processes and approaches. Education in the arts at all levels engages students in problem solving, which leads to innovation and engagement with complexity. In a healthy society this should be available to all. We look forward to welcoming visitors to the new campus during the next graduation exhibition, the RA Schools Show 2024, in June.'

royalacademy.org.uk 

davidchipperfield.com

julianharraparchitects.co.uk

The Architecture Window has just launched at the Royal Academy of Arts, offering valuable space within the important London institution to display young talent, fresh voices and 'micro-exhibitions' around the built environment. The project, which is set in the Ronald and Rita McAulay Gallery, was designed by emerging architecture studio Unknown Works (a 2022 Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory entry) and will remain on site for three to four months, championing dialogue, accessibility and creative power. 

The Architecture Window at the Royal Academy of Arts

The Architecture Window's design ‘takes the form of a large scale, adaptable structure, with interchangeable shelves and external shutters which can be reconfigured to display 2D works, 3D models and film, for each micro-exhibition’, its organisers explain. 

The first of the series of free exhibitions in the space is titled 'Crunch', and focuses on work by 2023 graduates of architecture and design schools. The displays explore materials, resources and the city, examining anything from tactile, handmade crafts, to digital technologies of the future. Fraser Muggeridge studio has created the graphics for the show, including a billboard style poster on the wall which will be updated with each subsequent exhibition in the room.

Vicky Richardson, head of architecture and Drue Heinz curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, said: 'The Architecture Window is located on the RA’s internal street – a free space that connects across the RA and gives us an opportunity to show work by new voices in architecture. The structure is intentionally robust and constantly changing to reflect the nature of the city around us.'

royalacademy.org.uk

The Royal Academy Dorfman Award 2023 winner has been announced – with Mexico’s Taller Gabriela Carrillo claiming the top spot at a ceremony this evening (2 November), during the annual Royal Academy Architecture Awards Week. The programme's festivities allow the public to learn more about the Dorfman's shortlisted studios, as well as attend a lecture by 2023 Royal Academy Architecture Prize winner, the Irish architect Shane de Blacam, which took place on the premises earlier in the week. 

Royal Academy Dorfman Award 2023: the winner

This evening's prizegiving ceremony means Taller Gabriela Carrillo will receive the £10,000 Dorfman Award, which is supported by the event's founding partner, The Dorfman Foundation. Carrillo – whose portfolio spans museums, hotels, residential and community projects – set up her own studio in 2017, after making partner at the practice of Mauricio Rocha. She is also the co-founder of a collective, C733, which focuses on public projects. ‘I am in love with my work,’ she told Wallpaper* in a 2021 interview. ‘I grew up in a country which is always in crisis, so I love to translate this into opportunities. [I am] always thinking of the future.’

Royal Academy Dorfman Award 2023: the shortlist

Alongside Taller Gabriela Carrillo, the shortlisted studios for this year's prestigious accolade included Comunal (Mexico), Harquitectes (Spain), and Tropical Space (Vietnam). The four nominees for the 2023 Royal Academy Dorfman Award offered a presentation of their work at the special evening event, ahead of the unveiling of the overall winner. 

Vicky Richardson, head of architecture and Heinz curator at the Royal Academy, said: 'The RA Architecture Prize is a chance to discover the work of an architect whose dedication to practice has been sustained and inspirational. Shane de Blacam’s buildings show us the power of architecture to bring people together in spaces that are generous and beautiful. The RA Dorfman Award finalists each represent distinct approaches to some of the most pressing challenges of our time, from climate change to socially produced habitats.'

royalacademy.org.uk 

Herzog & de Meuron has been active in architecture for the last four decades, but while the work of Swiss studio’s founders Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron undoubtedly has a signature twist, you don’t always know their buildings when you see them. The pair has an intuitive and creative approach which has aided them in creating an international company and brand, the legacy of which will last long into the indefinite future. Their research and concept-based approach to architecture sets them apart from their peers and their global reach is impressive; they truly are one of the most famous contemporary architecture firms in the world. 

From London’s era-defining Tate Modern and its celebratory extension to the highly complex Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, their projects span zeitgeist-shaping cultural moments. They have also been shaping the future of care with the REHAB clinic in their native Basel and their upcoming children’s hospital in Zurich. Additionally, they have long had an eye on sustainable architecture. Herzog & de Meuron are architects with a great deal of foresight. How do they do it? 

Herzog & de Meuron: into the mind of the studio's founders

The eponymous exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, opening this week, sheds light on the practice, its methods and ethos. One of the most fascinating details to know about Herzog and de Meuron is that having met in 1957 at primary school, they have known each other for almost their entire lives. 

'What I think this means is while we have, as Jacques says, different agendas, Jacques does his thing, and I do my thing and we trust each other blindly,' Pierre de Meuron explains. 

Sitting in their offices in Basel, de Meuron reminisces about bonding over a model rollercoaster, crediting the intuitive relationship they have on the deep sense of kinship that one has with a lifelong friend. They are still based in the arty Swiss city of Basel, host to multiple museums and collections as well as one of the world’s most important art fairs, Art Basel. 

‘I didn't know what architecture was, I was never inspired by the idea, ideology or beliefs,’ says Herzog, who started out interested in fine art and exhibited as an artist before switching to architecture. 

They are famous for their collaborations and friendships with artists from Ai Weiwei to Rémy Zaugg and Thomas Ruff and the way they execute ideas speaks to an artistic approach and is something Herzog is leaning into in some of his most recent projects like the Motorway Chapel near Andeer in Grisons, Switzerland. 

‘Our work is architecture, it often has something conceptual that reminds you of an artwork, but it’s so interesting because it’s this conceptual basis that makes it so architectural,’ Herzog explains. ’There are other projects, very small ones that I work on… They are more like art projects because nothing is given, you know, no brief, not a precise site, no budget, no zoning. So how do you do something if nothing is given? These are normally more the conditions under which an artist is working rather than an architect and these things are very rare.’

Each project is foregrounded by a huge amount of research encompassing the local area from the bottom up, its people, its buildings, zoning and how the built environment works and doesn’t work for the people who use it. This benefits not only the planning and competition process but aids their results which although they can stand out from their surroundings also seem to meld into them. 

One example of this is their work on the concert hall Stadtcasino Basel, one of many projects in their home city. It blends seamlessly into the Basel city centre on the outside and offers us up into a Lynchian dream world once in the foyer, readied for the transporting power of the music performed in the concert hall which they restored to its original design. 

This long process is archived going back to the first projects Herzog & de Meuron ever worked on. This archive is held in Kabinett, Basel, a studio, high-concept storage facility and charitable foundation in Helsinki Dreispitz, a building by the architects sat at the juncture of two Swiss cantons. Elements of this feature in the Royal Academy show, revealing the selective process of archiving, which they see as essential to the way they realise buildings and execute town planning. This is, according to exhibition curator and head of architecture and Heinz curator at Royal Academy of Arts Vicky Richardson, unique. 

‘It’s very difficult to think of another practice you could say that they are like, apart from in the most obvious sense of their size and their global scope – and of course, we’ve become used to these sort of global practices, like Foster and Partners and Bjarke Ingles Group and others – but I think there’s definitely more to it than that, she says. 

Herzog & de Meuron at the Royal Academy: explore the show

This unique approach to working is reflected in their approach to exhibiting, as the newly launched exhibition shows us their process, including a film and a AR aspect, which seeks to put the people and their experience of the buildings first. A strong focus of this is the idea of ‘care’ in the shape of a film by Bêka and Lemoine, and a room dedicated to an in-progress children’s hospital in Zurich. It reflects the practice's focus going forward.

The displays are organised in three sections. A room full of architectural models greets the visitors, as they step into a part of the studio's archive, with models, tests and mock ups spread across rows of timber shelves. This is also where the AR experience begins, by downloading a specially designed app and exploring different projects with an enhanced view, following graphic prompts next to the selected schemes to be 'augmented'. 

The Bêka and Lemoine produced film follows, as the bustle of the first room, full of shapes and information, is swapped for a darker room and a more quiet, screening experience. The filmmakers transport guests to the halls of Herzog and de Meuron's rehab clinic in Basel, as it is seen through the eyes of its users - patients and staff. It's powerful and moving, and sets the mood for the last section, which is dedicated to a big, current project by the firm - the Zurich children's hospital. Here, models, interactive video elements and more AR allows the public to delve into not only the thinking behind the design, but the design itself, as the building, currently in construction (and set to complete in 2024), can be explored thoroughly as both an in-progress piece, and a finished, virtual space. The idea of care is central - healthcare, but also caring, and support as a whole. 

‘Ultimately, what I think architecture and planning should do is open up potentials,’ Herzog mused. ‘Potentials are sometimes obvious, but they are not discovered, they are not excavated, they are not being used. You cannot do anything about this as an architect, but with the money that you’re given, the site and the materials that you use you can both maximise these potentials and make something beautiful.’

Herzog & de Meuron will run 14 July - 15 October 2023 at The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries at Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK.

royalacademy.org.uk 

herzogdemeuron.com 

The RA Architecture Prize 2023 has been awarded to Shane de Blacam, it has just been announced. The Dublin based architect has been honoured for his 'inspiring contribution' to architecture, as well as 'his commitment to communal spaces for learning, exchange and contemplation'. 

De Blacam is in good company. The prestigious gong, which is now fifth year of the annual prize, and is supported by the Dorfman Foundation, has in the past been presented to architects including Wallmakers and Itsuko Hasegawa. 

RA Architecture Prize 2023: Shane de Blacam

The award's jury said: 'de Blacam’s buildings demonstrate a pleasure in simple local materials, combining loadbearing masonry and joinery. In both new buildings and sensitive historic restorations, de Blacam’s practice reminds us of the power of craftsmanship to create spaces where we can come together for stillness and reflection. His work has been a powerful influence on contemporary Irish architecture, and he is an inspirational figure for those he has taught and worked with.'

De Blacam founded his joint architectural practice, de Blacam and Meagher, together with partner John Meagher in 1976 and the pair collaborated on a slew of projects, until the latter's death in 2021. The former's experience in internationally acclaimed studios of the 20th century, such as Chamberlain, Powell and Bon in London and Louis I Kahn in Philadelphia, imbued his work with influences from modernist architecture which he translated into each scheme and context, often using natural materials, in particular wood. 

Vicky Richardson, head of architecture and Heinz curator at the Royal Academy said: 'The RA Architecture Prize is a chance to discover the work of an architect whose dedication to practice has been sustained and inspirational. Shane de Blacam’s buildings show us the power of architecture to bring people together in spaces that are generous and beautiful. The RA Dorfman Award finalists each represent distinct approaches to some of the most pressing challenges of our time, from climate change to socially produced habitats.'

De Blacam will deliver the 2023 RA Architecture Prize Lecture in October, as a result of his win.

'The first architect of the Royal Academy, William Chambers, built a masterpiece that he never saw, a small building north of Dublin city called the Casino, completed in the late eighteenth century. I have learnt all that I know and love about that period of European architecture from this building. On behalf of myself and the young architects at the practice, as well as partners John Meagher and Andy Richardson, and all those who designed and drew our buildings, we are humbled, grateful and honoured to be recognised in the company of painters, sculptors and others, at the Royal Academy in London,' he said. 

Today, the shortlist for the Royal Academy Dorfman Award has also been announced, naming Harquitectes (Spain), Taller COMUNAL (Mexico), Taller Gabriela Carillo (Mexico), and Tropical Space (Vietnam) as its finalists. The winner will be announced on 2 November 2023, and will be receiving a prize of £10,000. 

royalacademy.org.uk 

deblacamandmeagher.com 

William Kentridge has been a global creative powerhouse for the best part of two decades, yet it feels like he’s only just entering his stride. South Africa’s most influential contemporary artist is the subject of a major exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, which fills its Main Galleries with works spanning Kentridge’s wide-ranging practice, from drawing, etchings, collage, printmaking, film and sculpture to tapestry, theatre, opera, dance and music. Kentridge’s performative, poetic and literary output mark him out as a Renaissance man, but in a distinctive sense that is at once African – he identifies simply as African – but which also bears traces of his Lithuanian Jewish heritage. 

Kentridge was born in Johannesburg in apartheid South Africa in 1955. His father, Sydney Kentridge, became a leading defence lawyer for Black South African leaders in the political trials that dominated international news media during the late 1960s through to the late 1970s. He represented Nelson Mandela during his 1958-1961 treason trial, and in 1978, he gained worldwide acclaim for representing the family of the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. Of his performance, Lord Alexander of Weedon wrote: ‘Through remorseless and deadly cross-examination, sometimes with brilliant irony, Kentridge established that the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement had been killed by police brutality. The verdict of accidental death was seen as risible.’ 

Watching his father in court sparked in the young Kentridge an early interest in dramaturgy, politics and history. It led him to acting school, but after graduating, he realised his talents fell short of what was required. When we speak over Zoom in late July 2022, I point out that he always seemed to find success by embracing failure. His response is characteristically blunt: ‘It’s not so much embracing failure. I understand that I’ve always been saved by failures. But each time, it has been a painful failure. It’s not that at the time, I think, “Oh, this is great, it’s failing”. When I couldn’t be an actor, that was very painful. I really thought that’s what I wanted to do, but I was no good at it. When I couldn’t do oil painting, it wasn’t something I celebrated.’ Kentridge still credits his training as an actor for a lot of his success as a visual artist, but only because it crystallised for him that failure is a definite form of knowledge. ‘I can say that a person’s biography shows how one is saved by thorough failures. If you fail a little bit, that’s hard, because you’re not sure whether you should stop or keep going. If you fail thoroughly, then the decision is made for you. It was very clear I was not going to be an actor. It’s not going to be. I became an artist.’

The world is grateful for those saving failures. Acclaim for Kentridge’s work has long since crossed continental boundaries. Indeed, it seems as if there is a museum show on Kentridge every month in some major European, Asian or American city. Suzanne Ackerman, a South African collector who has been collecting Kentridge’s work for the past 25 years, says ‘the versatility of Kentridge’s work is extraordinary and adapts to the relevance of our distressing past, as well as to the hope for a better future on our African continent.’ As leading Nigerian artist Victor Ehikhamenor puts it: ‘William Kentridge is your quintessential polymath. He is an artist who is not limited to a particular material or genre. His dance with both heavy and light art material, as well as his fusion of traditional and technological practice, makes his body of work unique.’ Even Dutch artist Renzo Martens, a gadfly to the art world establishment, whose film and museum projects in Congo have been called ‘ethically troubling’ and ‘politically problematic’, approves of Kentridge. He says, ‘I could say that, in his early animations, he was able to analyse and put to trial the horrors of the apartheid system, not as if it were some outside phenomena, but as something he was part of.’ 

There cannot be many more erudite artists than William Kentridge. During our nearly two-hour conversation, I was reminded of his keen interest in literature, history and music, his philosophical prowess and scientific rigour. The wordsmith in Kentridge has many aphorisms but only one diktat: ‘Art must defend the uncertain’. You do not need to be a Freudian psychologist to diagnose the reason for his love of this epigram. Apartheid South Africa was propagandised with the certainty that the utopia enjoyed by white South Africans would be at risk should freedom be granted to Indigenous South Africans, yet its fanatical last-stand resolve always concealed a corrosive kernel of doubt. 

During this era, Kentridge was inspired by another vision of utopia – or of a sanctuary, which he has come to see as the inevitable consequence of all attempts to build human utopias. For a brief period, Black and white South Africans would interact in the context of theatre. He recalls ‘the great days of South African theatre, from the early 1970s to the 1980s. One of the things that happened was this meeting of people who otherwise you would not have met in apartheid, with their racial separation. The theatre, in its very limited way, was a kind of utopian space, where, for those hours, there was a meeting. Obviously, once the evening finished, Black people went home to very different lives. But it became a way of seeing how people could work together and live together in a different structure.’

Uncertainty is vital to the curiosity that drives Kentridge. It has led him to interrogate the convictions of political and ideological utopias, and expose how quickly ideology morphs into authoritarian dystopias. His work holds a mirror to the limits of human intervention in society, not just in South Africa but across the world. Kentridge connects geographies through thematic explorations of how history is written. For example, his work with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found resonance in Berlin with the reunification of West and East Germany, and the subsequent opening of the Stasi archives; similarly, in Colombia, with the Civil War and FARC reconciliation after the pronouncement of an end to hostilities and the declaration of amnesty. All of Kentridge’s work that deals with these grand issues begins with a line, a drawing. I had the pleasure of curating his seminal 2019 solo exhibition in Cape Town, ‘Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings to Work’, his most revealing to date. Kentridge turned three large exhibition floors of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art into his studio. Was it a case of the magician revealing his tricks? To experience the exhibition, you realise it is not magic, but the very opposite: it is sleepless nights ruminating and staying with an idea. Image making through a process that begins with mark making or drawing to construct a visual history of the world. 

Kentridge’s solo exhibition at the RA is in a similar vein. ‘It’s very much a view from the studio outwards... the studio is the central point. The animated films [have] never been shown this way before, we’re showing five screens in one room. So you can almost construct your own film by the frames you look at, on the different screens around the space. Even though I’ve made [them] over a period of 30 years, they have a kind of coherence because of the same technique of charcoal drawing.’ Kentridge absorbs ideas from his experiences and harvests these ideas through sheer physical exertion. The combination furnishes him not only with the creative energy required to overcome timidity in addressing the void beyond (the greatest fear of many artists), but also with the stamina to see through to fruition work that explores political and social themes while his own story continues to shift and develop.

Given this thematic complexity, the media and materials called into service in Kentridge’s work are necessarily wide-ranging and protean. The RA exhibition spans a vast array, including two-dimensional artworks in India ink, charcoal, linocut and silkscreen print on paper; kinetic sculptures that evoke the Duchampian readymade tradition; several multi-channel video artworks comprising dozens of projections; and a large-scale installation in the form of an operatic model complete with mechanical puppet actors, titled Notes Towards a Model Opera (2015). The erasure technique adopted for his animated films involves using charcoal to make subtractive and additive drawings on the same sheet of paper, in a way that makes clear that what is being projected is a succession of drawings which retain faint traces of what has been erased. This contrasts with traditional animation, whose seamlessness projects a fantasy verisimilitude. By allowing traces of previous sketches to remain visible, Kentridge maintains the focus on his perennial theme of time and change, and reinforces the protean immediacy that he considers essential to faithfully communicating meaning and quickening the viewer’s memory.

In Notes Towards a Model Opera, my personal favourite, and the work with the most acute relevance for the present global moment, Kentridge uses the form of the revolutionary operas performed in China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution to encourage viewers to make a revolutionary imaginative leap across continents and social, political and economic systems, until they are finally able to establish a personal and granular connection. It is rooted in extensive research into the intellectual, political and social history of modern China that Kentridge undertook in preparation for the exhibition when it was originally shown in 2015 at UCCA Beijing. The three-channel projection explores the dynamics of cultural exchange and transformation through the strict formal prism of the Cultural Revolution’s eight model operas. 

Among the eight are two didactic ballets, considered both as cultural phenomena in themselves and in the context of a continent- and epoch-spanning history of dance that traverses Paris at the court of the Sun King, Tsarist Moscow, belle époque Shanghai and Kentridge’s native Johannesburg in the 1950s. Notes Towards a Model Opera strips out the didacticism of its model, but nonetheless pays homage to this element in the accompaniment of calligraphic India ink drawings on paper from Chinese books. As in other pieces in which he eschews plain paper for almanacs or documents, Kentridge here underscores his intent of being a cartographer and archivist, enhancing the world’s common store of knowledge. Ancient maps charting the course of this cultural diffusion hint at the historical complexities running alongside this exercise in ‘peripheral thinking’. The dance of Johannesburg mixes with the ballet of China’s revolutionary model operas set to The Internationale, a song which emerged from the defiant squalor of the 1871 Paris Commune. Notes Towards a Model Opera explores the concept of utopias. It is, thematically, quintessential Kentridge.

Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward campaign was the precursor of the Cultural Revolution, and both failed utopias are embraced in Kentridge’s work. The sparrow cull during the Four Pests campaign as part of the Great Leap Forward caused locusts to proliferate and destroy harvests, leading to a huge decrease in food production and contributing to the famine that led to the death of an estimated 35-45 million Chinese people. In Notes Towards a Model Opera, Kentridge superimposes sparrows in unceasing flight onto pages of the Shuowen Jiezi, a dictionary from the second century. The urgent tapping in the background evokes the banging of pots and pans by ordinary Chinese citizens to prevent the sparrows from landing, which ensured that sparrows that were not shot got no rest and eventually died of stress and exhaustion.

The juxtaposition of China during the Great Leap Forward and South Africa at the inception of apartheid makes the theme of failed utopias and their corresponding sanctuaries hauntingly resonant. Utopia – meaning ‘no place’ – is by definition an unattainable ideal. The fanaticism and certainty that united the instigators of apartheid and the Great Leap Forward are counterbalanced by the uncertainty that shapes the sanctuary Kentridge has created in The Centre for the Less Good Idea, in Johannesburg – an interdisciplinary incubator where doubt and failure can be entertained by artists seeking sanctuary. 

The idea of utopia precedes the coiner of the term, Thomas More. Plato’s Republic was a utopia, as was Bacon’s New Atlantis. The People’s Republic of China, like most nominally socialist countries which call themselves republics, is – wittingly or not – saluting Plato. The United States, the world’s capitalist hegemon, also a republic, was founded in line with Bacon’s Great Instauration, as a New World in which Plato’s lost Atlantis would be revived to spur a revival of arts and sciences that would lead to a universal golden age of peace, plenty and prosperity. Kentridge’s work explores the topical confrontation between China and the US, which are failing in contrasting ways. On 8 August 1963, Mao said, ‘I wish to take this opportunity to express our resolute support for the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.’ The New York Times described his statement as ‘a formal bid by Peking for leadership of the world’s colored people against the whites’.

Kentridge’s work does an expert, impartial and non-didactic job of showing how words and images are distorted in the beauty parade of contending failed utopias. As we emerge from the current dystopia of the pandemic and live in such uncertain times, Kentridge’s exhibition at the RA seems like a momentous occasion to embrace uncertainty in the hope that it might unearth less perfect ideas to guide our present and future.

INFORMATION

A version of this article appeared in the October 2022 Legends Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

• Kentridge’s exhibition is on show from 24 September-11 December at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. royalacademy.org.uk 
• 'In Praise of Shadows' runs from 12 November 2022-9 April 2023 at The Broad, Los Angeles. thebroad.org

kentridge.studio

Wallmakers, the India architecture studio founded by Vinu Daniel, has scooped the coveted Royal Academy Dorfman Award 2022. The prestigious accolade, offered once a year to an architecture practice that represents the potential the field has through innovation and pioneering ideas, is awarded by founding partners London's Royal Academy and The Dorfman Foundation. It was designed to encourage and foster global architecture that helps change the world, pushing the boat out for the industry – it also provides the winner with a £10,000 prize. Daniel's take on architecture urges a rethink of the architect's role, and carves the way for better, and more sustainable architecture.

Wallmakers stood out to the judging panel, which praised the Kerala-based studio's ‘energy, creativity and willingness to take risks while achieving sustainable buildings that exist harmoniously within the landscapes and ecologies in which they are erected'. Daniel explains: ‘We practise something we call non-linear practice. Typical practice is first on paper, there is no feedback, it’s linear, one way. But a very definite and distinct disadvantage is what damage architects are causing to the site. [In traditional practice] if a wall goes across a tree, the tree goes – but we don’t want it to be like that. [In my studio] the workers learn and the architect learns too. It’s a lot about learning from each other.'

Wallmakers' Vinu Daniel

Daniel, who trained in architecture at The College of Engineering, Trivandrum in his home state of Kerala, practiced at the Auroville Earth Institute for the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) before returning home. There, he started practising, while working on his construction sites. His studio grew from there, officially established in 2007, and always guided by an ethos centred on sensitivity towards nature, materials and craft. Working with brick and mud blocks, timber and other local materials, the practice takes on a variety of projects, always with respect for and synergy with the natural context in mind.

‘We are supposed to protect the ecology,' says Daniel. ‘Who am I building for? I am there daily at the site, with my workers. Are we damaging the place? Because we exchanged some papers, does it mean we own a piece of land? How about the plants and animals? Can we have a symbiotic understanding with all these creatures, is it possible?'

The award's jury comprised chair Farshid Moussavi RA; Farrokh Derakhshani, director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture; Hisham Matar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Cornelia Parker RA; Zoë Ryan, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania; and Peter St John RA. Wallmakers fought off competition for the other three finalists, Apparata from the UK, Dot Architects from Japan, and Semillas from Peru.

‘Wallmakers’ work engages with issues raised by the climate emergency with a creative energy and urgency that will inspire architects to reconsider the impact of their work in relation to ecology and the consumer economy,' said Moussavi. ‘Vinu Daniel began work as Wallmakers after coming to a point where he had all but rejected architectural practice as it was being taught. The jury was impressed by Vinu’s willingness to improvise and take the risky route of exploring unprecedented interventions, as much as his insistence treading lightly on the planet. There is a strong sense that this is an architect who is just getting going and we will all follow Wallmakers’ career with the keenest interest.'

INFORMATION

wallmakers.org

French architect Renée Gailhoustet has been awarded the prestigious 2022 Royal Academy Architecture Prize. Given to an individual or practice ‘whose idea or body of work has made a positive contribution to the public and had a significant impact on society’, this accolade has in the past been bestowed to Cristina Iglesias (2020), Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio (2019), and Itsuko Hasegawa (2018), who marked the inaugural year for this honour.

In that spirit, Gailhoustet's work seems a fitting winner. The architect, who was born in Oran in French Algeria in 1929, set up her own studio in 1964 in Paris. Public housing projects, such as La Maladrerie in Aubervilliers and Le Liégat in Ivry-sur-Seine, make her stand out in her field for her innovative approach and striking form-making.

‘Renée Gailhoustet’s achievements reach far beyond what is produced as social or affordable housing anywhere today. Her work has a strong social commitment that brings together generosity, beauty, ecology, and inclusivity,’ says chair of the 2022 Royal Academy Architecture Awards’ jury, Farshid Moussavi. ‘This award highlights housing design as one of the most pressing and complex issues of our time by inviting the public to rediscover the work of one of the most committed and prolific practitioners of the 20th century – an architect who pioneered a new approach to housing design, and was an early adopter of important principles, such as generous public space and nature in the city.’

The big prize announcement has been followed by the highly anticipated reveal of the shortlisted practices that will compete for the 2022 Royal Academy Dorfman Award. This year, the emerging architecture studios that form the shortlist are Apparata (UK), Dot Architects (Japan), Semillas (Peru), and Wallmakers (India). The final winner will be presented at a dedicated ceremony during the Royal Academy Architecture Awards Week, 12 – 16 September 2022, and they will win £10,000. The same event will also see Gailhoustet receive her honour too. 

‘The Royal Academy’s architecture awards programme draws on a global network of experts and enthusiasts to consider how architecture impacts the public, and to seek out exciting new talent. It is an opportunity for international dialogue and research, as much as a chance to celebrate excellence,’ says head of architecture and Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy, Vicky Richardson. ‘Renée Gailhoustet and the four Dorfman nominees are all worthy recipients that fulfil this mission. On behalf of the Royal Academy and the Academicians, I’d like to offer thanks for the efforts of our nominators and jury, and the support and benevolence of The Dorfman Foundation.’ 

INFORMATION

royalacademy.org.uk

If you are in any way related to the architecture field, then the name Hélène Binet is no doubt familiar. The Swiss-French photographer has long been a staple presence in architecture, as her lens has captured the works of some of the biggest names in the industry – Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Peter Zumthor, to name but a few. But it is certainly not the association with iconic architects that makes Binet's images stand out; the photographer's ability to capture and manipulate the relationship of shape and light into sublime photographs that translate architecture into two-dimensional, visual poetry is what makes Binet's work so popular and truly timeless. 

The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) in London is celebrating Binet's career so far and her impressive body and quality of work through ‘Light Lines: The Architectural Photographs of Hélène Binet’, a new show that opens in the RA’s Piccadilly premises on 23 October 2021. The exhibition comprises some 90 photographs, from hand-printed in black and white, to full colour – all showcasing Binet's powerful framing and unique perspective. 

‘Our programme for the year ahead places emphasis on discovering the meaning and poetry of architecture through the work of Hélène Binet and American architect John Hejduk,’ says Vicky Richardson, the RA’s newly appointed head of architecture and Heinz curator, referring also to the large-scale display based on the work of Hejduk that is coming up in The Ronald and Rita McAulay Gallery in 2022. Indeed, notions of poetry, solitude, stillness and texture seem to be ever-present in Binet's work. 

Travelling the world through the quietly captivating imagery of Hélène Binet is a real treat. There is also a gentle focus on the works of the late Zaha Hadid (including photographs of the MAXXI museum in Rome), with whom Binet had a close professional relationship – as she has done with other leading 20th and 21st century architects. From Zumthor to Gottfried Böhm and Le Corbusier, Binet was there, capturing some of architecture's most iconic buildings and giving them her own, poetic take. 

INFORMATION

‘Light Lines: The Architectural Photographs of Hélène Binet’, The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries 23 October 2021 – 23 January 2022

helenebinet.com

royalacademy.org.uk

Ever since scientists spoke out about the negative effects of modern life on the environment in the 1950s, artists, designers and architects have attempted to use their unique skills to rebalance the Anthropocene. In 1960 Buckminster Fuller and Shoji Sadao proposed a 3km dome over Manhattan to regulate pollution; in 1965 artists founded alternative commune Drop City in south Colorado; while in 1982 artist Agnes Denes harvested a 2-acre crop just two blocks from Wall Street.

For the latest exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (RA), a team of curators – Gonzalo Herrero Delicado, Pedro Gadanho and Mariana Pestana – have selected 21 of the ‘eco-visionaries’ of today from across the fields of art, design and architecture. Their contributions, from models, installations and prototypes, to film and photography, each reveal a ‘complex mesh of forces at play beneath the headlines’ says Gadanho, architect, former MoMA curator and director of Lisbon’s MAAT museum.

‘The ecological crisis feels familiar to us but the information comes to us in numbers, statistics and data. This exhibition allows visitors to engage in a more subjective and emotional way, to feel what the crisis might be and understand the complexities through works that take you on a deep journey through some of these problems,’ continues Pestana, architect and co-founder of curatorial collective The Decorators.

Across this laboratory, technology, science and data come alive through visual means. For example, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg has collaborated with AI experts DeepMind to create a digital reproduction of the last male northern white rhinoceros, who died in March 2018. The animal roams its virtual space, an eerily empty white box, growing into its form through pixels of information and rare zoological archive footage.

Bringing colour and new meaning to data, London-based architect and researcher Nerea Calvillo floats a veil of colour above Madrid, which detects and highlights microscopic pollutants in the air. The colours flow over the city, rising and falling over the course of the day.

It’s easy to get lost in the meditative motions of both of these works, but they are powerful warnings too, showing the important role that artists can play in making data come to life, capturing attention and inspiring awareness (something that scientists, with all their merits, are not as good at).

An opening film by Ana Vaz and Tristan Bera compiles an assemblage of popular culture scenes, documentary clips and found footage into a convincing introduction to the route of our failing Anpothrocene. Through the windscreen of a car we zoom through the roaring 20s, to the sky highways of science fiction ending up in a Day After Tomorrow apocalypse scenario. Aggressive snapshots of capitalism, inequality, Frankenstein, school shoot outs and industry are played to a soothingly lyrical narrative.

Hearts and minds are similarly captured in the work of artist collective and interactive theatre group Rimini Protokoll. Their work, Win Win, made in 2017 and exhibited in the UK for the first time here, is an immersive piece that invites visitors to become part of a questioning process that seeks to explore ecological empathy. It’s an eery performance that results in a group of jellyfish peacefully floating in a tank, a sinister forewarning of how certain species will thrive within the chaos of climate change.

Some of the architects’ contributions respond to the changing world with technology and design, seeing the future as a place where technology will allow us to survive here on this earth. Philippe Rahm’s meteorological park in Taiwan creates a moderated environment reducing humidity, pollution and even eliminating mosquitos.

More speculatively, a 3d printed resin model of WorkAC and Ant Farm’s work City, Climate, Convention, Cruise, from 2015, imagines a floating community that improves relations between humans and animals – inspired by Ant Farm’s iconic 1970s ideas.

Animals and their uncontrollable accumulation or extinction as a signal of the permanent and irreversible damage that we have caused is a reoccurring theme. ‘Extinction is one of the most urgent problems, and it has accelerated to 1000 times more than it should be. The extinction rate has an effect on eco systems and food chains, and we are not biologically or technologically prepared for it,’ says Pestana.

More traditional works of art in the exhibition use beauty combined with factual information to grip the audience. Olafur Eliasson’s photographs from the Ice Melting Series, 2002, poetically show the process of blocks of glacial ice melting into the terrain in Iceland; while Danish artist Tue Greenfort uses delicate black and white prints of Tilapia fish to draw attention to the growth of the predatory species that is threatening the flourishing of other fish.

The works successfully use images, facts and ideas to agitate a chilling tension between fear and optimism across the whole exhibition. ‘We started with an optimistic vision, but then realised how dire the situation was,’ says Gadanho. ‘However, we certainly wanted to end on a bright note of how architects and designers are imagining solutions to problems, and the fundamental role of the imagination.’

Low waste exhibition design

The Royal Academy of Arts is also putting their ideas into practice with a sustainable approach to the exhibition’s design by Delvendahl Martin Architects. The team used reclaimed materials, and avoided single use plastic with the aim to reduce the exhibition’s carbon footprint and minimise waste.

Much international experience in exhibition design, from Venice to Gwangju, has illuminated Delvendahl Martin to the problems of the architecture of temporary display where bespoke creations have no life beyond the end of a show.

This show was an important moment for them to reflect critically on how they can help solve this by salvaging elements from previous RA exhibitions and collaborating with textile designer and upcycling expert, Barley Massey, to create a modular display intervention that can even be reused in a new formation.

INFORMATION

Eco-visionaries: Confronting a planet in a state of emergency
23 November 2019 – 23 February 2020

The exhibition was jointly initiated by the Fundação EDP/MAAT Lisbon,  Bildmuseet Sweden, and LABoral Spain and Matadero Madrid.

royalacademy.org.uk

dm-architects.co.uk

ADDRESS

Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
Mayfair
London
W1J 0BD

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Antony Gormley’s blink-and-you’ll miss it Iron Baby (1999) greets the hoards of culture vultures already circling London’s Royal Academy of Arts, ahead of his anticipated self-titled exhibition. Its foetal form, cowering on the Annenberg Courtyard floor, snatches your breath as you enter the RA. ‘I just want to go and cover him up with a blanket,’ says someone. ‘It's going to be a trip hazard,’ jokes another. And so the tone is set for Gormley’s 17-room exhibition, that will literally and figuratively have you on the wrong foot.

Try to find a quiet time to experience it if you can. It’s how the artist – a student of Buddhist meditation – would no doubt want you to experience it. But, despite the crowds, a calming aura settles on each installation. It’s in part down to the Enlightenment-era galleries themselves, which are equal parts imposing and meditative. Gormley was intimately involved in all aspects of the three-year long curation process (as is common with solo exhibitions at the artist-run institution) and he puts the existing architecture to great use.

Indeed, work has been undertaken to reinforce the historic galleries’ floors and walls in anticipation of Gormley’s large-scale sculptures and installations. The Main Galleries have become an armature for sculptural experiment. The veining on the ornate marble-arched doors echoes the rust marks on Gormley’s statues in Lost Horizon I, that sprout from the walls, floor and ceiling, forming a metal forest of faceless men. Elsewhere, in the RA's grandest gallery, miles upon miles of meshwork in Matrix III (2019) builds ever denser, like a cloud formation before a storm, underneath a vast glass skylight.

Few new works are present in the exhibition, but all feel fresh in their site-specificity, even for those who are familiar with them. Each is mesmeric in its intense physicality, playing with spatial awareness and perception – a testament to Gormley’s curatorial sensitivity. He has compared the challenges of any particular site to the resistance of marble for the sculptor who carves. No piece exhibits this more than the penultimate one, a giant steel tomb that you can physically enter, seeking pockets of light that reveal themselves as you crawl. Groping your way through the womb-like dark, you come out the other side, and – passing a room flooded with seawater – eventually, into the blinking light of the courtyard. Here, you’re reunited with the Iron Baby you saw on the way in, and brim with a new kind of kinship with it.

It’s easy to be bedazzled, and somewhat distracted, by the large format sculpture on display, but the drawings and small paintings are not to be skimmed over. Handpicked by the artist, they present some of his quieter moments, directly from his 45-year archive. They dart between philosophical musings on quantum mechanics that resemble an architect’s blueprints. Like pages ripped from a diary, they offer intimate insight into Gormley’s thinking – on urbanism, on the body, on our relationship with nature.

With such edifying themes being covered, Gormley was keen to keep a close eye on the commercial arm of the exhibition. And although you exit through the gift shop, a reading room has been planted in-between, with the intention of offering visitors pause for thought after what is a dizzying display. Gormley has edited the shop's product collection, including a stationary collaboration with Muji (Gormley uses its notebooks daily), a cycling jacket with London brand Rapha (the artist is a keen cyclist), and a limited-edition fragrance by famed nose Azzi Glasser.

INFORMATION
‘Antony Gormley’, 21 September – 3 December, Royal Academy of Arts. royalacademy.org.uk

ADDRESS

Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
London W1J 0BD

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The Royal Academy's 2019 Dorfman Award for Architecture was announced last night, with Thai architect Boonserm Premthada – founder of Bangkok Project Studio – scooping the gong. The prize also marks the start of the RA's Architecture Week – the institution's summer celebration of inspirational building design. 

‘I am very happy to have been chosen as the winner of the Royal Academy Dorfman Award', says Premthada. ‘It gives me the opportunity to share my love of architecture and what I believe in with the world'. Premthada beat stiff competition from Mexican architect Fernanda Canales, Ireland's office TAKA, headed by Alice Casey and Cian Deegan, and Mariam Kamara of Atelier Masomi from Niger.

The coveted honour is an annual prize, which highlights the work of a practice or individual from anywhere in the world, who represents the ‘future of architecture'. Emerging architects with plenty of promise, young talents who make a difference in their local community and would otherwise remain largely unknown; this award was design to honour just those people, the ones who are starting to make waves and deserve wider recognition for worthy work in their respective countries. The ones that you know you will be hearing more about in the near future.

‘All of the four Royal Academy Dorfman Award finalists have shared immensely impressive projects that demonstrate how inspiring architecture can make a difference to people’s every-day experience', Kate Goodwin, Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator, Royal Academy of Arts. ‘They have highlighted why the Royal Academy Architecture Awards, now in their second year, are one of the most important aspects of the Royal Academy’s architectural activities. We believe in fostering architectural talent, enhancing discourse across the world and building greater awareness and knowledge of the role architects are playing in shaping our environments.'

Architecture Week continues today with a lecture by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, the winner of the annual Royal Academy Architecture Prize – the institution's highest architectural accolade. 

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Royal Academy website

There is palpable momentum behind the sculptural force that is Phyllida Barlow. Her latest operatic aria for the Royal Academy, fulfils every expectation of the acclaimed British sculptor: master of paradaox, connoisseur of materiality and astute interrogator of space. All offset with her unique self-effacing, quietly-spoken charm. But within this soaring three-room sequence in cement, fabric, polystyrene and plaster, a new type of sculptural magic is afoot.

From the entrance, a linear trajectory unfolds as a figure of eight. Immediately, a flurry of stained canvas drapes, bustling like polychrome ghosts. Dusty reds, oranges, greens and yellows sing to a cheerful tune, the only hint of melancholy in their concrete bases; cold and tactile against the frayed fabric folds. Circling behind the canvas thicket the second masterpiece approaches: a treehouse or watchtower of sorts, asymmetric, three-legged, and unsettlingly top-heavy.

Derived from her lintel-inspired work, the spindly timber posts surmounted by concrete slab are here mammoth in scale, and strikingly pared back. ‘After Venice, I wanted to break away from things getting submerged,’ Barlow explains. She quotes Brâncuși’s famous proposition: ‘Why would you make a stool with four legs, when three will do?’. This is a the new era for the artist. Theatricality lives on, but her new sculptural agenda is one of expediency, simplicity and precision.

In the second room, space is compressed, ‘like a ship in a bottle’. A tilting platform lowers our gaze, impaled with jagged posts like cranes legs stuck in the mud. In close quarters, a lumpy column of painted dull grey rises floor to ceiling, futile in its engorged proportions. Confusion and illusion rises – the metallic structure pierced with the apparent ease of cardboard, while beckoning the column into its empty concave form. Is this a reference to the ominous, sinister quality a cul-de-sac imbues for the artist? ‘You get to the end and you’re not sure how to get out. It is a David Lynch moment!’

Entering the cul-de-sac of the exhibition, absurd acts of balance reach new heights, literally. Three skip-sized boxes perch atop a rickety timber skeleton, seemingly fixed with no more than dabs of plaster and an upwards prayer. It wills us to climb up to see the view, but we must suspend all disbelief – the effect lies in our imagining, the equivalent of Méret Oppenheim’s fur teacup. ‘You are left in a state of obeyance,’ says Barlow. Never before has a cul-de-sac seemed so psychologically charged, so geniusly irrational, nor so fantastically absurd.

INFORMATION

‘cul-de-sac’ is on view 23 February – 23 June. For more information, visit the Royal Academy website

ADDRESS

Royal Academy
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD

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Celebrated New York architecture duo Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio of Diller Scofidio + Renfro have just been revealed as the 2019 Royal Academy Architecture Prize winners. The annual gong, which is given out to architects for their ‘inspiring and enduring contribution to the culture of architecture', is now on its second year, following last year's honouring of Japanese architect Itsuko Hasegawa.

Scofidio and Diller's work, in many ways, captures the architectural zeitgeist. It can be iconic and eye-catching, featuring dramatic forms and material experimentation. But it can also be subtle, with a soft dynamism, ever-changing and reaching out to connect with different types of practices, disciplines and strands of local and global culture.

The pair has worked as a team since the 1980s and has built an internationally acclaimed firm that operates with a strong presence in the cultural realm, in the arts – visual and performance – in a way that few architecture practices do. DS+R’s built works include the Blur Building, a temporary structure in Switzerland for the 2002 Expo and the Broad museum in Los Angeles (2015). Above all they champion interdisciplinarity and bridge building, design and urban culture, all key discussion points in the contemporary architecture field.

‘At the Royal Academy we view architecture as a social art form, that is integral to our lives and ever present’, says Kate Goodwin, head of architecture and Heinz curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. ‘We therefore think about architecture broadly and aim to contextualise its relevance within society and culture, often acting as translators between the profession and the public. I believe in expanding the spatial literacy of us all so we can understand the world we inhabit and work towards shaping a better one.’

The winners were selected by a jury of experts including director of LSE cities Ricky Burdett, Louisa Hutton RA co-founder of Sauerbruch Hutton, Lesley Lokko head of the graduate school of architecture at the University of Johannesburg and broadcaster Kirsty Wark; and chaired by Royal Academician and co-founder of Stanton Williams Alan Stanton. 

Today, the London institution also announced its highly anticipated list of finalists for the Royal Academy Dorfman Award for global talent and emerging architects. These include Fernanda Canales (Mexico), Alice Casey and Cian Deegan, TAKA (Ireland), Mariam Kamara, Atelier Masomi (Niger) and Boonserm Premthada, Bangkok Project Studio (Thailand). The winner in this category will be decided in front of a live jury during Architecture Awards Week (13-19 May 2019).

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of the Royal Academy of Arts

‘As an architect you spend your life fighting against the force of gravity. It is the most stubborn force of nature.’ Renzo Piano’s reflections on his eternal struggle to achieve structural weightlessness are captured in a film by Thomas Riedelsheimer, specially commissioned for the Royal Academy’s new exhibition ‘Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings’.

As if responding directly to Piano’s musings, the Academy’s gallery spaces have been filled with an array of soaring architectural models and design elements, suspended from the ceiling like a collection of prototype flying machines. The largest spans the entire length of one gallery, a bright red model representing one of the principal trusses of the main terminal building at Kansai airport in Osaka, Japan.

The airborne exhibits respond to the work laid out below, grouped into detailed case studies of 16 of Piano’s most significant past and ongoing projects, including the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, currently under construction in Los Angeles.

Each case study features an array of volumetric and massing studies, sketches, and concept models, such as those of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, colour coded to match the programme of functions of the building, collectively demonstrating the progression of each project towards the final design.

Other exhibits drawn from the Renzo Piano Building Works (RPBW) archives offer rare insights into the complexities of building to such scale and ambition. The evaluation reports by the Kansai Airport competition jury, complete with hand written notes by Piano in his trademark green pen, are offered alongside the letter from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that gave approval for The Shard in London following the public enquiry of 2003.

At the centrepiece of the exhibition is The Island, an imaginary model specially designed for the show by RPBW that brings together 102 past and current projects into a complete Renzo Piano landscape. The model is surrounded by a series of black and white images by Gianni Berengo Gardin, a long-term friend and collaborator of Piano.

Gardin’s images capture a range of intimate moments from the architect’s life and career and bring, along with Riedelsheimer’s film, a human face to the series of grand civic gestures represented elsewhere. With Piano’s attentions now turning to assist his native Genoa after the recent tragic events, the exhibition readily demonstrates the Italian’s ability to achieve remarkable architectural forms despite the political and economic complexities that face the modern architect.

See our preview of ‘Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings’

INFORMATION

‘Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings’ is open at the Royal Academy of Arts in Lodon from the 15 September 2018 - 20 January 2019. For more information visit the RA website

Currently celebrating its 250th anniversary, the Royal Academy of Arts, which hosts the annual unmissable Summer Exhibition, has been making, debating and showing art since 1768. The RA’s ever expanding campus now includes a new lecture theatre and a link between its Piccadilly and Burlington Gardens galleries for the first time in its history. 

Read more about London by Design: Frieze art fair here

INFORMATION

Website

ADDRESS

Burlington House
Piccadilly

The Royal Academy of Arts in London not only launches its two new architecture awards this week, celebrating the winners of the field’s two new prestigious gongs; it also kicks off a week of architectural festivities that will span lectures, award presentations and discussion panels, especially designed to promote architecture’s critical role in our world and culture.

The respected London institution has announced the winner of its inaugural Royal Academy Dorfman Award. Alireza Taghaboni, founder of Next Office in Iran, scooped the coveted honour, beating off competition from Anne Holtrop, founder of Studio Holtrop (The Netherlands and Bahrain), Rahel Shawl, founder of RAAS Architects (Ethiopia), Architectura Expandida (Colombia), and Go Hasegawa, founder of Go Hasegawa and Associates (Japan).

Pictured here, one more design by the 2018 Royal Academy Dorfman Award winner, Villa Guyim by Alireza Taghaboni Projects

The jury praised the winning architect for his ‘extraordinary achievement in realising buildings of high architectural quality in today’s turbulent context of Iran’. The winner was selected by a jury including architects Louisa Hutton RA and Richard Rogers RA, Harvard Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, BBC broadcaster Razia Iqbal, artist Conrad Shawcross RA and critic and curator Joseph Grima. It represents excellence in architecture and ‘the future of architecture’, say the organisers.

‘I am overjoyed to win the first Royal Academy Dorfman Award for Architecture’, says Taghaboni. ‘I want my architecture to have a productive purpose in a country where the context is political.’

The series of events during the 2018 Architecture Awards Week will also include the Royal Academy Architecture Prize Lecture by Japanese architect Itsuko Hasegawa, who was the first ever recipient of the particular prize, announced earlier in the year (both this and the Dorfman Award are generously supported by the Dorfman Foundation).

Further events at the RA this week include an afternoon of discussions and presentations by students, educators, and the finalists of the Royal Academy Dorfman Award and a panel discussion about the worldwide influence of Japanese architecture, with speakers such as Itsuko Hasegawa and architect Takeshi Hayatsu.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of the Royal Academy of Arts

If you have been to the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, then you would have already had the chance to admire the sheer number, inventiveness and variety of this year’s entries (and if you haven't – just go). Curated by artist extraordinaire Grayson Perry RA, the show has been desrcibed as one of the most fun and colourful snapshots of modern art today, comprising a striking 1,300 or so handpicked artworks in an array of mediums – and the Architecture Room, which this year was especially curated by architect Piers Gough RA, also strongly reflects that. 

From Níall McLaughlin to Ron Arad and Thomas Heatherwick, some of the best and brightest of Britain’s contemporary architecture scene are represented in the exhibits – as well as one of the field’s recent losses, the respected architect Will Alsop who passed away earlier in the year. Works span beautiful sketches, meticulous architectural drawings, paintings, sculpture and of course, plenty of architectural models – something that was especially encouraged by Gough, balancing last year’s Farshid Moussavi-curated show, which focused on drawings. 

There’s tall buildings and tiny buildings, fantastical visions of the future and pragmatic responses to today’s pressing questions, involving housing, culture and heritage across the country; while young, dynamic practices, such as Bureau de Change, are also notably present in the displays. 

As is traditional, apart from orchestrating this architectural celebration, the RA is giving out its annual awards for best in show, and for the Architecture Room this year the prize went to Matthew Bloomfield, a recent Part II University of Sheffield architecture school graduate who currently works at Allies & Morrison. Bloomfield will be presented with the £10,000-worth Turkish ceramics Grand Award for Architecture for an imaginative, well-balanced and beautifully made model of his project: ‘The Parliamentary Campus Of God’s Own Country’. The piece was praised by the judges as a wonderfully crafted piece that reflects a complex, futuristic vision of architecture and urban planning that doesn't use the traditional language of the genre, and an experimentation that touches upon issues such as infrastructure and landscaping for urban settings. 

Further winners of the RA Summer Exhibition’s prizes include Mike Nelson RA, who won the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award for his entry, ‘Untitled’; and Sofia Mitsola and Jerome Ng, the joint winners of the coveted British Institution Awards for Students.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Royal Academy’s website

It’s an exciting year for the Royal Academy, as it celebrates its 250th anniversary – with David Chipperfield’s highly-anticipated redevelopment that includes a new bridge connecting Burlington Gardens and Burlington House, an auditorium, and redesigned galleries.

Chipperfield described the redevelopment project as ‘a masterplan made of small pieces.’ Perhaps one of the smallest details in that masterplan comes courtesy of London-based graphic design studio LucienneRoberts+, who has contributed to the historic 250th anniversary redesign with a small but very significant shift inside the Academy: a new system for free displays – of which there are many more in Chipperfield’s transformation.

With the aim of ‘drawing on the past – but in contemporary ways just as the RA does’, the studio approached the brief with both function and fun in mind – reflected in the results. They have done away with unattractive and often unintelligible labels, and come up with an easy-to-install idea that looks good while not stealing the viewer’s eye.

‘We developed a modular rod system that allows RA staff to change or reconfigure labels quickly and easily.’ LucienneRoberts+ explains. Their elegant, adaptable brass rods (brass was chosen as it’s ubiquitous in and around the RA, from door knobs to light switches) have several innovative touches, from their flexible positioning – they’re able to be hung horizontally or vertically, to respond to different kinds of artwork installations – to their two-point adhesion, meaning they can cope equally well with painted walls and the buildings’ historic bricks.

The labels that the rods will hold will be printed on luxuriantly thick card, made specially by GF Smith, using one of the RA’s house fonts, the Sans-Serif typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk. ‘We thought long and hard about using paper in some of the RA’s busiest spaces, but the schools’ early emphasis on drawing made it the right choice to complement to the brass.’

No matter the amount of information, the distinctive brass system will make interpretative labels throughout the galleries more cohesive and less cluttered. At the same time, the design of the rods makes it possible for several labels and labels of varying sizes to be hung side by side. While classic white is kept for object labels, they have taken a more experimental tack with the those introducing sections and subsections, with colours alluding to elements embedded in the architecture.

As advocates for graphic design that can distill complex ideas into accessible forms, these carefully crafted free displays prove why LucienneRoberts+ is leading the way in its field – and through the new RA.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Royal Academy website and the LucienneRoberts+ website

I remember standing in the dark outside 6 Burlington Gardens, escaping the hubbub of ‘Sensation’ at the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), five minutes’ walk and a world away. Peering out gloomily into the greyness of late 1997, the building – home to the Museum of Mankind for almost three decades – was now shuttered up. It was a squarish slab of neoclassical architecture in the high style. It had once been white. It was sparely ornamented with statuary dedicated to British cultural heroes and a few ‘illustrious foreigners’ accorded (almost) equal status. Its columns and porticoes were beautiful, but burly, Victorian approximations of Hellenic originals, coarsened once by Roman tastes before finally being given a dose of Anglo-Saxon heft.

Creatively, as an ethnographic offshoot of the British Museum, the Museum of Mankind certainly had its moments. As a destination space, it had been a dead loss. It was a dead block in a deadening part of town. Savile Row had never spilled round the corner and the Albany, the apartment complex next door that had been home to Basevi and Byron, kept its own counsel. This was a building no one quite knew what to do with.

Or so it seemed. A tortuous two decades of planning disagreements and false starts later, astonishing new gallery spaces, a 250-seat double-height lecture theatre that updates Epidaurus for the digital age, and for the first time a splendid, adventurous physical connection to the main RA building on Piccadilly will help create a whole new cultural hub in the heart of the capital, courtesy of the most in-demand art-world architect.

Burlington Gardens has all the signature elements of David Chipperfield’s topology, which is to say, the complete absence of signature. It’s what has made him, along perhaps with Renzo Piano, the pre-eminent shaper of cultural spaces today. After years of ebullient art space architecture – often much hated by the artists themselves – there was demand for more rigour, honesty and restraint. Chipperfield offers that in spades.

‘He is so good at context,’ agrees RA artistic director Tim Marlow. ‘He doesn’t have a signature style but can work interestingly in so many different styles. So when you think about the Neues Museum in Berlin, the Hepworth Wakefield, Turner Contemporary or his museum for literature in Germany, you see he’s got such breadth but there is a real rigour to him as well. More than anything, he understands artists; I think he would be very interesting to talk to about ways of engaging with the space on a programming level.’

Chipperfield himself characterises projects such as Burlington Gardens or the Neues Museum as ‘interventions’ and is happy to downplay their import. No one, he says, will leave Burlington Gardens talking about a David Chipperfield project, and that is exactly as it should be. ‘I don’t think architecture should be waving all the time,’ he says. ‘I mean there are some times when it needs to be waving more than others. If you are in an industrial site in the middle of Wakefield and you’ve got to help rejuvenate a city that has been beaten to bits, then you have to start waving your hands a little more than you might do if you’re in the middle of Berlin or London. But generally I think the time for icons has passed. People are now rather suspicious; they ask why is this building so expensive. Museums had become confused with branding.’

All the same, his beautiful work at Burlington Gardens is, if anything, even more radical than at the Neues Museum. The interior certainly offered a less promising palette than Berlin. It was a dull misto of years and styles: all corridor and hallway, not nearly as large as the façade made it appear. It had served successively as space for the University of London, the HQ of an ill-fated National Antarctic Expedition, and Civil Service offices, all before its stint as the Museum of Mankind. Since 1997, parts of the building have hosted temporary exhibitions for the RA, and galleries such as Haunch of Venison and Pace. But in all the principal rooms the years had left their mark – partition walls, Formica desks, false ceilings and grubby greige paint. There were modifications and mezzanines. An institutional memory lingered. Much of the circulation around the building had happened through fire doors and up cramped service wells, brightly lit by bare 100W bulbs, like a Martin Parr Polaroid.

This was what the RA acquired in 2001. In theory, it had added a large listed Italianate building 30m to the rear of the Royal Academy Schools complex, with which it could connect to expand its footprint. In practice, it was much less straightforward.

‘We wanted to bring the grandeur back,’ says RA president Christopher Le Brun. ‘But as the years passed without real progress, the discussions intensified with people wanting to knock it down and keep only the façade.’ Le Brun, a Royal Academician since 1996, actually started working on the project before the RA had raised the funds to buy it. The original master plan, by Michael Hopkins, had involved an ambitious scheme to glaze over the space between the two buildings, British Museum-style. The costs exploded, and the plans were shelved. A second, more modest, plan by Sandy Wilson was then adopted. But the RA Schools, located between 6 Burlington Gardens and the RA’s main site at Burlington House, wouldn’t let a link go through their space, and there was nowhere else on site to relocate a 50 or so-strong student body. ‘So Sandy’s plan made the link go all the way around the outside,’ explains Le Brun. ‘This wasn’t popular. I remember a meeting where we showed it to all the architects in the RA. As of one person they said no; they hated it. I think Piers Gough even used a rude word. They said it’s obvious, you have to go straight through the middle to connect the spaces.’

The project stalled again; the second master plan lapsed on Wilson’s death in 2007. It seemed for a while that a grand project might never happen – until a third competition was held. ‘David Chipperfield won it, with a scheme that did indeed go through the middle of the site, and everything changed,’ says Le Brun. ‘I went to talk to the schools with David’s project architect, and they saw the quality of his scheme and quickly agreed to it. That made all the difference. And as soon as we could go through the middle of the site, all of David’s ideas – a light touch, being straightforward, respecting the integrity of the original building: they all worked. We could start to see it really was a beautiful building underneath. He had just done the Neues Museum. He was clearly ideal. Not only was he an Academician, he was able to treat a historic building with tact and sympathy but also fairly robustly, not over-respectfully.’

Now, finally, this plan is coming to life, just in time to mark the RA’s 250th anniversary. Like the Neues, much of the pleasure is in the detailing. Chipperfield’s favourite space is a former brick vault he reclaimed from acres of piping, which now serves as an exhibition space. Lit by pendant lamps designed by the architect, the grand circulation spaces lead to impressive new display areas. Tacita Dean will open the space, and then a major Renzo Piano show will bring architecture to the new building, something that is envisaged as an essential part of the new programming. A permanent architectural studio will host a programme of year-long interventions, and for the first time there will be a full event and lecture programme. ‘Having this amazing lecture room is key,’ says Marlow. ‘There is so much discussion and debate at the RA. Now we have the space to programme as much as we want.’

All told, the plan increases the RA’s gallery space by 70 per cent. Chipperfield has also retained the windows in a new middle gallery that overlooks the centre of the site, and created a huge gallery in the west, where the RA will show some of its permanent collection – much of which is currently in storage – for the first time.

But the absolute key, the proposal which unlocked the whole site, is the link bridge. Bar the lecture theatre, it’s the only bit of what Le Brun calls ‘freestanding Chipperfieldness’, and it’s spectacular. From it you look out into the hidden courtyard and the schools at the heart of the RA. And because the collections galleries are free, they will surely help the RA become a destination between its hugely influential shows.

‘My feeling about architecture,’ says Chipperfield, ‘is that visitors don’t have to look at everything all the time. They have to be happy in the ambience of the place, and only then do they realise someone has put a lot of time into the detailing of it. Detailing has no purpose on its own. Design has no purpose on its own. But I do think that someone can smell or feel when trouble and care has been taken. That was our experience of Neues, and that is what we are hoping for here.’

As originally featured in the June 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*231)

INFORMATION

The new Royal Academy of Arts opens on 19 May. For more information, visit the Royal Academy of Arts website and the David Chipperfield website

ADDRESS

Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
Mayfair
London W1J 0BD

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Cross-disciplinary collaborations have become the new normal in fashion. Artists add their visual language to garments, usually on request of fashion designers, creating a dynamic in which fashion appropriates art.

The British Fashion Council’s Fashion Arts Foundation is changing that tried-and-trusted modus operandi by partnering with the Royal Academy Schools. They’ve paired fashion designers with artists to produce artworks that sit within Christie’s' Post-War & Contemporary Art department, and which will be auctioned online.

‘We’re writing history – actually commissioning new contemporary art by emerging artists,’ said Paola Saracino Fendi, head of the department's online auctions, at the display’s opening at Christie’s' King Street Gallery.

Menswear designers Agi & Sam worked with the sculptor Joe Frazer on an installation made of metal bleechers on and around which flags and sportswear were draped. ‘The whole process was about getting to know each other,’ says Sam about their first direct collaboration with an artist. ‘We wanted to make a social commentary that is not too obvious. It’s about the idea of how society is broken up into different worlds. This one is about how in sports there is still a real sense of community.’

Alex Mullins teamed up with Amy Petra Woodward, creating a wild but contained installation of jasmine trees juxtaposed with photographs that connect the natural source material with almost personal references. ‘We wanted to create a flow, between something peaceful and harmonious that is simultaneously quite messy.’ Meanwhile, footwear designer Diego Vanassibara and Victoria Adam’s piece was a sculpture of an oversized seashell, accompanied by its shadow.

For the temporary café Milk, menswear designer Kit Neale worked with sculptor Jonathan Trayte on a multi-piece collection of art-as-design that functions as furniture. ‘They did a good job of pairing us,’ comments Trayte on their mutual love of colour. Neale’s potential idea of opening a shop in London was combined with Trayte trying out a more utilitarian approach to sculpture. ‘The social aspect of congregating became important, apart from each sculpture maintaining their character,’ he says. For Neale, it was an exercise in freedom. I’m in awe of the art world’, he says. ‘It is the ultimate creativity.'

INFORMATION

’Fashion Art Commissions’ is on view until 11 November. Tthe auction runs from 22 November until 1 December. For more information, visit the British Fashion Council website

ADDRESS

Christie's
8 King Street
St James's
London SW1Y 6QT

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Not so long ago, if you'd said that an automatic machine could print a lifelike, 3D portrait while you wait, you'd be told you need your head scanning – but this is precisely what the Royal Academy of Arts has on display this weekend.

The 'Veronica Scanner' (which takes its name from a portmanteau of the Latin word 'vera' meaning truth, and the Greek word for image, 'εικόνα'), uses an advanced form of digital photogrammetry to scan your head. Thousands of overlapping photographs are taken from many angles, then aligned by software algorithms – in what looks like a futuristic version of Photoshop – into a 3D model that can be rendered in a material of your choice. Perhaps marble, for a faux-classical (if slightly egocentric) bust.

Veronica, as the designers affectionately call her, has been developed by the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation and the Rothschild Foundation over the course of two years into a fully integrated package, that takes you from sitting to sculpture in a matter of hours. This marks a new moment for digital portraiture, as Adam Lowe, director at Factum Arte, explains, ‘We think of photographs as images but this odyssey into 3D portraiture demonstrates that they can also be sculptures.'

Before being brought to the RA, Veronica was used primarily to aid cosmetic surgery procedures, providing acutely precise 'before and after' images. This exhibition shifts Veronica's focus to the art world for the first time, and no doubt a few photo-realist purists will have a thing or two to say about it. The artistry, the makers believe, comes in the technological advancements, the ideas and the scientific progress, not necessarily in the self-sculpted products.

Nonetheless, the resulting photo-sculptures are remarkable objects, and the artistic possibilities that they offer are astonishing. Portrait heads can be made giant, or tiny, and used to create perfect raw bases for sculptors to then embellish, should they wish. But the most exciting thing of all is that for the first time, we can preserve a thoroughly accurate, non-judgmental representation of the human face, unbiased by pen, lens or canvas. As Lowe says, 'The dream of the Greek sculptors was to create a realism that went beyond subjective interpretation. We are thrilled that both the RA and the Rothschild Foundation have reacted so quickly to bring this emerging technology to the public in a spirit of experimentation and curiosity.’

INFORMATION

The Veronica Scanner: Live 3D Portraiture' is on view until 11 September at Royal Academy of London, and again at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire from 22–30 October. For more information, visit the Royal Academy website

ADDRESS

Royal Academy
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London, W1J 0BD

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With the success of his 2012 landscape exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts still looming large, David Hockney returns once more to the RA. This time, he's occupying the Sackler Wing, with an intimate exhibition of recent portraits.

Painted over the last two and a half years in Hockney’s studio in Los Angeles, the exhibition is a window into his life in the City of Angels, with the subject of each portrait personally invited by the artist to sit for him. They range from friends and family to acquaintances and staff, and include recognisable figures such as Larry Gagosian, Jacob Rothschild, Frank Gehry and Celia Birtwell, as well as Hockney’s siblings.

Though the number of portraits is expansive, each has been created with a sense of uniformity; all are painted on the same size canvas within three days, and depict its subject seated in the same chair against a bright blue background. In doing so, Hockney aims to place emphasis on the personalities of his subjects, as well as his own development in the medium of acrylic paint. To highlight this progression, the works are hung chronologically throughout the galleries. The exhibition is curated through a close collaboration between Edith Devaney, curator of contemporary projects at the RA, and Hockney himself.

In addition to the portraits showcased, the RA will also release an illustrated book containing interviews with the artist, photographs of several of the paintings in the process of being completed, and an exploration of Hockney’s portraiture by Tim Barringer, Paul Mellon professor of the history of art at Yale University.

INFORMATION

’David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life’ is on view until 2 October. For more information, visit the RA’s website

ADDRESS

The Sackler Wing
Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London, W1J 0BD

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Watch a teaser of Oscar-nominated director Mike Figgis’ film, exploring the Royal Academy of Art’s architecture ahead of its blockbuster redevelopment...

The Royal Academy of Arts in London recently marked a new chapter in its storied history, announcing a £50m redevelopment scheme led by architecture icon Sir David Chipperfield to coincide with its sestercentennial in 2018. Although the London institution hasn’t turned 250-years-old just yet, celebrations to mark the start of the blockbuster renovation kicked off with a private celebration at the RA yesterday where progressive music group Carnet de Voyage premiered a special sonic and visual performance.

‘If most museums are like Zurich, then the Royal Academy is like Naples,’ quipped Chipperfield ahead of the performance, reflecting warmly on the institution’s internal ‘tribes’ and the occasionally strained progress of the redevelopment (which is ‘on time, and on budget,’ for the record). It’s this tension that breeds a compelling brand of creativity – and it’s also a tension most perfectly embodied by musical duo Carnet de Voyage, who overlay classical compositions with electronic riffs .

Carnet de Voyage (‘travelling notebook’) formed in early 2014, after Rosey Chan and Mimi Xu – both classically trained musicians – met at the Venice Biennale. ‘It was an exciting prospect to join forces on pushing and exploring boundaries of live performances by creating site-specific projects which uses the “frame” (architecture) as one of the starting points,’ explains Xu of the union. Since then, the duo has performed across the globe in several top art spaces including Gagosian galleries, the Barbican, the Serpentine and Palais de Tokyo.

Their latest endeavour stems from a chance meeting with Charles Saumarez Smith, secretary and chief executive of the RA, at the opening of Sir David Tang’s new cultural centre in London. From there, they exchanged ideas about a site-specific collaboration, using the frame of the RA to create a multimedia event to kick off The Burlington Project.

Academy Award-nominated director Mike Figgis was enlisted to create a film to incorporate into the performance, which also stars New York-based chorographer and dancer Zack Winokur, along with members from the Central School of Ballet and a trio of contemporary dancers.

‘As the film ideas began to progress on paper, we began thinking about the best way to incorporate the music, a combination of [Carnet de Voyage] ideas and pure film score,’ explain the pair. To wit, Chan and Xu opted to perform the score live, while Figgis’ haunting film was screened overhead (Figgis, too, joined in the proceedings, on a trumpet no less).  

Awash in a lurid blue light, Chan immediately lured the audience in with a rousing melody on the piano, while Xu countered with an electronic arrangement. ‘We were excited by the challenge of playing the score for the film, live, as opposed to pre-recording it,’ they add. ‘This gave us a certain amount of flexibility in terms of our timing and our reading of the film at any specific moment.’ In the film, the dancers writhe – occasionally stark naked – through the RA, its architecture unfolding in a musical and visual prelude to the institution’s rebirth.

Carnet de Voyage’s performance is a parting gift of sorts for the RA of old, which now begins construction and will reemerge anew in three years on the advent of its 250th birthday. Like Xu and Chan’s epic compositions, the RA’s forthcoming transformation will bridge the past and future with the tension of a taut, perfectly tuned piano string.

Dotted among the weighty tomes of the Royal Academy’s Print Room and Library is a collection of seemingly random white artworks. One is a prototype of a porcelain table by Amanda Levete; another a 1920s teapot by Kazimir Malevich; and there’s a two-handled teacup and saucer, made c. 1720 in Meissen. It’s Edmund de Waal’s most treasured piece of porcelain, and one of the 40 objects selected by the British artist for a show entitled ‘White’. ‘It’s translucent, weighs almost nothing and took 20 years to make’, he says. ‘It sums up all the agonies of working with porcelain and it made the pilgrimage worth it.’ 

The 'pilgrimage' he’s referring to is the subject of his latest book, The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts, which is an exploration of porcelain though the ages. De Waal spent years travelling from Jingdezhen in China to Venice, Versailles, even Dachau concentration camp, hunting out people who share his obsession with the material. He trekked up the Appalachian mountains with his son in search of the white clay once used by the Cherokee Indians and will be the first potter to use it since Josiah Wedgwood, who sent an expedition to excavate it 200 years ago.  

De Waal made three new works for the show, and after writing The White Road still professes a love for porcelain that has, if anything, deepened. ‘I can’t imagine not loving it. It’s just that the love gets more complicated. Writing the book, I went to some grim and difficult places in history.’ (Himmler deployed slave labour from Dachau to produce porcelain artworks for the Nazis between 1935–1945.) ‘It feels like a compromised material, but then it would, as anything that tries to be pure brings difficulty with it.’  

Admirers of de Waal’s writing will also be pleased to find in the library another of the artist’s most treasured objects – The Hare With Amber Eyes. De Waal’s first book of the same name brought ancient Japanese netsuke back to life. He hopes that The White Road will do the same for all those ‘totally forgotten people who have been though what I’ve been through. To me, anyway, they are not dead.’

INFORMATION

'White: a project by Edmund de Waal' is on view until 3 January 2016. The White Road: a pilgrimage of sorts is published by Chatto & Windus, £20

ADDRESS

Library and Print Room
Royal Academy
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London, W1J 0BD

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The five years since Ai Weiwei unveiled his installation of porcelain Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern have been truly momentous and troubling times for the Chinese artist. Not only was that the last time he had a passport and was free to travel to one of his own shows (he has had maybe 100 in the intervening period), but his world-famous name has barely been whispered in his own country since. Yet his homeland provides much of the impetus and thematic content for a major Royal Academy exhibition, which begins with a forest of petrified tree parts from the mountainous south and a giant extruded map of China’s capacious borders, before leading visitors through the ruins of an ancient temple and past the remains of schools flattened by the devastating earthquake of 2008.

It is arguably this latter work, entitled Straight (2008–12) – a monumental wave of steel bars salvaged from the gnarled wreckages of the Sichuan earthquake, painstakingly hammered back to their original state by hand – which landed Ai Weiwei in an unmarked prison for 81 days of interrogation. Much of the accompanying citizen’s investigation that uncovered the names of 5,000 children who died because their schools were inadequately built is also on display here; again, as much a provocation as a work of art. Evidence of his secret incarceration is also on show in the dioramas of S.A.C.R.E.D (2012) – six boxes containing scenes describing the conditions he was put under (the title standing for 'Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy and Doubt').

What elevates this show beyond the political, emotional or merely personal, however, is the artist’s meditations on normal life given a transformative, material twist – a child’s buggy stranded in a sea of marble grass, a sex toy carved from priceless jade, or a simple bicycle, conjoined with others to form a glamorous chandelier. Ai Weiwei is nothing if not contradictory: part destructive force – when smashing a Han dynasty pot, for example – and part keeper of traditional Chinese crafts and antiques, through his modified and mutated Ming furniture. Long may the dissent continue.

INFORMATION

’Ai Weiwei’ is on view until 13 December

Photography courtesy of the artist

ADDRESS

Royal Academy
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD

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Last week, the Royal Academy of Arts unveiled a revamped Academicians' Room as a private club for its esteemed members. Opened ahead of the London institution's highly anticipated Ai Weiwei exhibition, the exclusive room, located in the RA's Keeper’s House, is a grand Palladian space originally designed by Norman Shaw (RA, of course) in 1883.

Faced with the daunting task of creating a befitting space for the Royal Academicians (a discerning band of elected UK painters, sculptors, architects and printmakers) as well as their guests and members, was Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, who chose to implement a refined scheme modelled on the traditional drawing room.

‘Our inspiration was guided largely by the original Norman Shaw room,' explains the studio's eponymous founder. 'With its perfect Palladian proportions, fine paintings adorning the walls and light cascading from above, it felt like your quintessential English drawing room.'

Building upon the room's existing grandiose architectural detailing, the studio have filled the space with carefully sourced vintage furnishings to create an ambience that Brudnizki describes as an 'haute-bohemian feeling'. Highlights include 1960s library chairs in tanned leather, mid-century Italian chairs upholstered in dark green mohair, and 1950s and 60s floor lamps, all arranged across a colourful Mamluk rug.

In the centre of the space, a pair of red corner mohair sofas, designed in-house by the studio, curve into an S-shape; a four-metre-long green mohair sofa that sits at the far end of the room is also a bespoke piece by MBDS.

On the walls, a rotating display of new works from Royal Academicians such as Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and Allen Jones instantaneously make this space the most exclusive art gallery in the city. ‘The Academicians’ Room at the Royal Academy will be the place to see and be seen in,' says restaurateur Oliver Peyton, whose company Peyton and Byrne will be managing the catering for the new space. 'Martin Brudnizki Design Studio has designed a beautiful setting that will bring together like-minded people from across the arts world.'

INFORMATION

Photography: James McDonald

ADDRESS

Royal Academy of Arts
6 Burlington Gardens
Piccadilly
London, W1S 3ET

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For a unique insight into an architect's mind, peek into their sketchbook. Ever since the first architect scribbled the outline of a building on the first napkin, architects' sketchpads have been more than just a blank page to draw; they are places to lay down thoughts and develop projects, keepers of trade secrets, visual notebooks and compilations of inspiration.

A new exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts offers a rare journey into the psyche of established London architect Chris Wilkinson, co-founder of Wilkinson Eyre Architects. 'Thinking through drawing: Chris Wilkinson RA' marks the architect's 30 years of work and architectural drawing, and promises to open a window into his creative process and design approach, through the display of a careful pick of his hand drawings, watercolours and architectural objects.

A passionate believer in the importance of hand drawing, Wilkinson – an OBE and Stirling Prize recipient in 2000 and 2001 (respectively), and a Royal Academy fellow since 2006 – is behind a number of acclaimed works, such as the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth and the Maggie's Centre in Oxford. Many more highly anticipated works are currently in the pipeline for the firm, such as the King's Cross Gasholders canal side apartments, and many of them will be represented through drawings in this show.

Wilkinson's design work and expert architectural draughtsmanship will be celebrated by this exhibition, which opens today. The show is the perfect companion to the book Thoughts on paper: the sketchbooks of Chris Wilkinson RA, a recent publication by the Royal Academy of Arts, which collates a selection of the architect's intricate drawings.

ADDRESS

Tennant Gallery and Richard Sharp Council Room
Royal Academy of Arts
London, W1J 0BD

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The work of young British sculptor Conrad Shawcross is looming large and small in London this summer, as part of multiple gallery shows and as permanent fixtures as he emerges as a public art A-lister. His large-scale immersive installation The Dappled Light of the Sun has just been plugged into the Annenberg Courtyard of the Royal Academy on London's Piccadilly as part of it's annual Summer Exhibition (Shawcross it the Academy's youngest member).

The massive sculpture is five conjoined 'clouds,' made up of thousands of tetrahedrons built in steel - all 30 tons and seven-and-half miles of it. Standing six metres tall, visitors to the RA can wander underneath Shawcross' cloudscape and consider how chaos and beauty can be generated out of perfect order and geometry.

Opening on June 10 at the Victoria Miro gallery, North London branch, is an exhibition of smaller scale Shawcross works, mostly studies for Paradigm, his monumental sculpture to be installed outside the new Francis Crick Institute in Kings Cross. Paradigm is a 14 m-tall twisting stack of weathered steel tetrahedrons, which increase in scale as they push skywards. It is one metre wide at street level but five metres wide at its summit.

In April this year, Shawcross' Three Perpetual Chords, a series of giant steel loops, landed in South London's Dulwich Park, replacing Barbara Hepworth's Two Forms Divided Circle, which was stolen in 2011. And further afield, the New Art Centre, Roche Court in Wiltshire is showing a series of Shawcross works, inside and out, until July 26.

We spoke to an understandably frayed Shawcross about his busy year...

Wallpaper*: You're having an incredible year in London. Are you over the hump in terms of just getting everything done?
Conrad Shawcross: Yeah, pretty much. We have just finished the installation at the Royal Academy. We had to work at night using cranes.

W*: And how much was all this grand strategy and how much accident?
CS: Well, in the art world things get delayed and moved around, so you hedge your bets and line up as many things as you can. But suddenly all these things seem to have come at once so it's been a perfect storm.

W*: How have you managed to get the Miro show together with everything else going on?
CS: Miro gallery is kind of a supporting show. It's mostly a series of studies for Paradigm that will be installed in King's Cross. And there are a couple of other works called Manifold, which are really studies of how music decays into silence.

W*: You use the tetrahedron as a literal and conceptual building block, an essential building block?
CS: Well, to be honest, it's a very awkward building block. The Greeks thought of the tetrahedron as the essence of matter, indivisible matter. But if you build with them, they radiate out and bifurcate, like branches of a tree. It's irrational. The closest example is something like neural pathways in the brain.

W*: Do you use computer modelling when devising these sculptures?
CS: Yes, they need to be closely engineered and I work with a company called Structure Workshop on the modelling.

W*: You're not an artist who hands over the production side to other people. You don't do it all yourself though?
CS: No, with the RA commission we could only do about 20 per cent of it in the studio.  And we worked out it would involve 12 and half years of welding work for one man so we needed help. It was an epic job.

W*: And you can't really improvise as you are going along?
CS: Not really. A little bit, but the sculptures have to work structurally, the engineering has to be right and they have to be safe.

W*: What happens to The Dappled Light of the Sun after the RA Summer Show?
CS: It's for sale, so hopefully someone will buy it. It's designed to last for ever. It's a shelter; efficient, interactive.

W*: You now have permanent installations in public spaces. The works in Dulwich Park for instance, do you think about them differently to the gallery pieces?
CS: The pieces in Dulwich Park are huge but approachable and tactile. Children can play inside them, lovers can sit on them. It's very moving to watch people using them actually. And they will look different from season to season because they polish in the summer as they are used and rust over in the winter.

W*: And the work outside the Francis Crick Institute is a really huge work. It will become part of the cityscape.
CS: Yeah, that is a different kind of thing. It's monumental, 14-metres tall, and will become a real part of the city. It's called Paradigm because it's about how new paradigms are built on old ones until the whole thing collapses. And the sculpture is engineered to be as tall as it can be before toppling over.

Leading British artist Cornelia Parker’s major new installation, ‘One More Time’, has a new home as of today: St Pancras International station.

Previewed in the June 2015 issue of Wallpaper* (W* 194), by Anna Bates, 'One More Time' is a working replica of the station’s Dent clock – only reversed out, so that it is black where the original is white and vice versa. The black clock appears to float in front of the original, obscuring it as travellers move around the station, like the moon eclipsing the sun. The artist’s intention is to introduce the idea of slower, astronomical time.

The installation is the third of the Terrace Wires public art series. Each nominated artist is invited to develop a large-scale work, to be displayed for six months above the platform at St Pancras International. A new commission is made every year, by an advisory panel including broadcaster Evan Davis; Nigel Carrington, rector at the University of the Arts London; artist and curator Chris Wainwright; Wallpaper* editorial director Richard Cook; and Nicola Shaw, chief executive of HS1, which owns the station. This year is also the start of a four-year partnership with the Royal Academy to showcase new work by Academicians. Lucy + Jorge Orta kicked of the series with human sculptures on two clouds in 2013, and last year, David Batchelor replaced the clouds with a rainbow.

It was the latter that inspired Parker, indirectly. Her replica clock is in fact a copy of a copy; the original was sold by British Rail to help fund station renovations, but was dropped during removal. A railway worker collected the fragments and rebuilt the clock; it currently hangs on a gable in his barn, and was visited by Dent staff to help them make the copy that hangs in St Pancras now.

‘Mine is like a “son of ”, a close relative... the black sheep of the family,’ Parker jokes. ‘I like these copies, replicas, copies of copies. And I like the idea of hanging and time. Clocks aren’t usually free-floating. I like that about this, that time is this rogue thing; that there is one more time – and it could almost unhook itself from its situation and go somewhere else.’

The station is a particularly suitable setting for this installation, because for Parker, there are few places where time’s behaviour – its duality, as she puts it – is quite as strange: ‘When you’re in transit, time becomes more acute. You’re watching every minute. You’re in a heightened sense – are you going to catch your train? Then when you’re travelling, it’s almost like suspended time, isn’t it? When you’re travelling, are you living? You’re held in a state of limbo.’ As a meditation on this strange, human condition Parker has suspended time itself. ‘If there’s one thing about this piece, it’s about the limbo we’re all in,’ she reflects.

Find out more about Cornelia Parker's installation, turn to pg 124 of W* 194 - out now

'I like the idea of hanging and time,' explains Parker. 'Clocks aren’t usually free-floating. I like that about this, that time is this rogue thing; that there is one more time – and it could almost unhook itself from its situation and go somewhere else.’

'A series of subtle interventions.' That is how Sir David Chipperfield has described the £50m redevelopment of The Royal Academy.  

'You would think it's quite easy to connect two buildings separated by 15 meter gap,' started the world-renowned architect, 'but as we know, the bricks and mortar of this building are quite simple compared to the complexity of what goes on inside.'  

He was of course referring to the wide range of activities the RA carries out that often go unseen by the public - the lectures and teachings, the forums and its impressive collection. Uniting the two buildings is only half the battle; opening up the site is a greater challenge still.

Charles Saumarez Smith, secretary and chief executive of The Royal Academy of Arts also sees the redevelopment beyond an architectural project, but more as an ideological and psychological shift, 'the idea is to make people aware that the Royal Academy is a richer, more interesting, more complex institution than just a gallery that puts on exhibitions - and somewhere to come not just for the exhibitions.'  

A bridge will physically join the two buildings, linking the former University of London building at Burlington Gardens to Burlington House; joining Mayfair and Piccadilly through the world of art.  

Exhibition space will be effectively doubled allowing more work to go on show, including that of the Royal Academy School students, the Royal Academicians as well as the rarely seen treasures from its private collection and library. New learning spaces and a 260-seat lecture theatre will ensure its legacy as a centre for the training of emerging artist and practitioners remains at its heart.   

Chipperfield is the third architect to draw up plans for the RA's redevelopment, following the 1998 funding failure of Michael Hopkins & Partners' and the 2006 passing of Colin St John Wilson. Costing £50m, this redevelopment has been heavily funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund - to the tune of £12.7m. The rest of the money (although still £5m short) raised through a number of private individuals and foundations.

Speaking about the project as a whole, Chipperfield remarks that it is 'a small amount of architecture with profound result.' An admirable, if not humble, summary. More admirable still is the RA's aim to stay open throughout the building work, due to begin later this year and finish in time for the RA's 250th anniversary in 2018. An ambitious ask, but if the most inspiring institutions in the country can't do it, then who can?

ADDRESS

Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD

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London's Royal Academy of Arts welcomes the New Year with a brand new architectural blockbuster. Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined opens to the public this weekend and promises a feast for the senses, with installations offering not only dramatic visuals by well-known contemporary architects, but also offerings that engage your sense of smell and touch. 

It's an immersive experience. 'The exhibition is about experiencing, and the power and poetics of architecture,' explains the RA Drue Heinz curator of architecture, Kate Goodwin. 'People will respond to each of these installations in different ways and discover different things.'

Seven younger and established international practices coming from different parts of the world were invited to create full-scale installations that take up at least one full room (in some occasions two) of the RA's generous first floor temporary exhibition galleries. Aiming to draw upon the group's varied background, experiences and work, the show does not disappoint. 

Pritzker Award-winning architect Eduardo Souto de Moura's two beautiful door cases are concrete replicas from the RA's own doors, making a comment on the relation between original and copy. Berlin-based African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré created a room within a room made of plastic honeycomb panels, which the visitors are invited to tweak by weaving in little plastic straws. Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Irish practice Grafton Architects turn the visitor's gaze upward, by suspending a sculptural ceiling installation into two of the rooms, playing with light and lightness. 

Meanwhile, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma opted for a delicate, aromatic installation out of bamboo sticks that gently glimmers within two darkened halls. And Chinese architect Li Xiaodong designed a fascinating walk over an LED floor and through a timber framed maze of spaces. Álvaro Siza and Pezo von Ellrichshausen also offered beautiful installations.

In contrast to traditional displays, where the visitor is kept at arm's length from the exhibits, touching is a must in this show. The visitors will be encouraged to engage with, walk through and sit in the installations. In fact, not doing it would leave you missing the point. 'This exhibition is about architecture and you should engage with it as you would [in everyday life]', explains Goodwin. 'It is very hard to convey scale without experiencing it.'

In the Grade II-listed landscape of Mayfair, London, you often have to wait for someone to die before you can move, renovate or expand. Then come the years spent wading through planning applications. So it's something of an architectural miracle that the Royal Academy has come to open its Keeper's House after a six-year redevelopment.

The east wing of Burlington House, built by architect Sydney Smirke in the 1870s, served as a residence for the 'keeper', head of the RA schools. But gradually the annex took on more staff, becoming a glorified office block. When, in 2002, the Academy acquired a new space in Burlington Gardens to house more galleries, a shop and, most importantly, offices, the RA recruited architectural practice Long & Kentish to redesign the original building. 'Getting the Burlington Gardens space is what unlocked this whole venture,' says RA chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith.

The new Keeper's House is a playground for 'friends', or patrons, of the RA - equipped with meeting rooms, lounges and a lower-level bar that opens to the public from 4pm until midnight. Rolfe Kentish transformed the three-storey wing - from the former wine cellars to the first-floor Academicians Room - using original features, including a wood-panelled wall scored with nail holes from a century of art hanging. He installed a new glass lift in a former lightwell to unite the entire scheme, and to serve VIPs away from the main traffic.

Still it's the lower level that Saumarez Smith and his colleagues hope will draw the neighbourhood's young creatives into the RA sphere (one can never have too many 'friends', after all). David Chipperfield (an RA academician himself) came on board to piece together the interior of the Shenkman Bar, bringing in phone-box red seating and a custom counter. On either side of an original service hallway, he's outfitted formal dining rooms with deep green walls, leather banquettes and historical details, like wood ceiling beams dating back 150 years.

On the walls hang a cross section of RA works, democratically selected by a committee of Academicians. They've also chosen to 'plant' one of Michael Craig Martin's giant red Pitchforks in the tiny tea garden, fringed with palm by landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith. 'It's not big, but it's green,' says Saumarez Smith of the outdoor space. 'It's magical to have this right at the heart of London.'

ADDRESS

Burlington House, Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD

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Marking the architecture titan's 80th birthday, ‘Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out at the Royal Academy of Arts' is a timely revisit of his exceptional body of work – also celebrated in Wallpaper’s July 2013 issue.

The show, curated by the Royal Academy of Arts' consultant curator for architecture, Jeremy Melvin, examines key events and projects in Rogers' life and professional career, introducing the visitor to his beliefs about the importance of collaboration and team work, the key role of architecture and urban design, social responsibility and the need to create a vibrant city for all. ‘No man is an island', announces Rogers in a recorded message in the exhibition's brightly coloured entrance, ‘and neither is a building'. From the influence of his Italian roots to his education at the Architectural Association and Yale and his career onwards, the displays – designed by Rogers' son Ab – offer an interesting insight into Rogers' work and ethos.

Highlighting some of the architect's landmark projects - such as the Pompidou he designed as Rogers + Piano, the Lloyd's Building, the Barajas airport Terminal 4 and the National Assembly for Wales, all created by the Richard Rogers Partnership - the show also includes a wealth of previously unseen notes, sketches, drawings, personal items and ephemera. These are all created by - or linked to - the architect during his over 50-year-long career spanning work as Team 4 (with Norman and Wendy Foster, Su Rogers and Georgie Walton), Richard + Su Rogers, Piano + Rogers, the Richard Rogers Partnership and finally his office in its current form, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners. 

The architect might be 80, but he is showing no signs of slowing down, as we proved in our July issue. With a £135m extension to the British Museum, as well as a revival of 22 hectares of a disused container port in Sydney called Barangaroo in the pipeline for Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (among other projects), the architect is still firmly on the rise.

ADDRESS

Royal Academy 
Burlington Gardens
London 

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There was clearly quite a buzz about Mexico among between-the-wars European and American creative sorts, particularly photographers. The Royal Academy's new show - Mexico: A Revolution in Art - offers up not just the inevitable (but always welcome) Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, as well as a fantastic collection of prints of a magnificently mustachioed Zapata by José Gaudalupe Posada, but also photography from Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Robert Capa and a brilliant young Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as work by Josef and Anni Albers, and Andre Breton.

The ten years of revolution between 1910 and 1920 and then the public art programs sponsored by the new Ministry of Education, headed by José Vasconcelos, made Mexico a draw for international intellectuals. Vasconcelos tempted Rivera back from Paris to paint murals alongside David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco (they would soon be invited to do similar north of the border as part of the Public Works of Art Project). Weston, with Modotti in tow, also soon arrived from the US. DH Lawrence swung by and Weston's portrait of Lawrence is included in the RA's show.

The pair inspired a generation of Mexican photographers, including Manuel Alvarez Bravo who worked with Cartier-Bresson, who had arrived in Mexico in 1934 as an adventurous 24-year-old. The Albers made the first of their thirteen trips to Mexico in 1935, while André Breton came to hang out with Rivera and Kahlo, and Antonin Artaud came to take peyote.

Mexico: A Revolution in Art then is the story of a remarkable period when the country, and Mexico City especially, was home to a constantly refreshed and cross-fertilising artistic community (though a good deal of leftist sectarianism ensured that relations were not always copacetic). All of which makes for a fascinating little show, worth the admission for the photography of Bravo and Cartier-Bresson, and Albers' chromatic experiments, alone.

Address

The Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House  
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BD

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