Barber, who was elected a Royal Academician last year, has painted the Large Weston Room a zippy arsenic green and chosen ‘construction and making’ as the theme in his selection of exhibits.
Photography: AJ
As such, this is less of a static best-in-show display of perfect models, completed schemes and look-at-me presentation drawings, and more an enjoyably eclectic mix of materials and objects from textiles to ceramics, rough models to scribbled sketches, and a range of satisfyingly chunky bits and bobs from the making and detailing of buildings.
There’s a gargoyle carved as a pangolin from David Kohn Architect’s New College Oxford project and a butterfly joint designed for Feilden Fowles’ Homerton College Dining Hall by Structure Workshop – the latter one of several connectors and joints in the show, which chime with the EM Forster-inspired ‘only connect’ theme of the main art part of the Summer Exhibition.
Photography: AJ
In general, there’s less of the dry and precise and more a sense of the messy thinking and testing of ideas behind buildings – of works in progress. It’s a protean feel nicely epitomised by the inclusion of two tottering towering art works by the late Phyllida Barlow, a fellow RA, who died in March shortly after she and Barber had chosen the specific works to be included.
This sense of almost metamorphic transformation is found too in another tall element which cuts across one corner of the gallery: a truss crossed with a slender tree trunk constructed by students at the Architectural Association’s Design + Make MA programme.
Other exhibits have a similarly powerful almost metamorphic feel such as Matthew Dalziel and Raphaelle Jones’ Multi-species Neighbourhood, a strange, scaleless nest-like object. Investigative pieces include ex-AJer Laura Mark’s delicate jesmonite casting, like a mini archeological dig, cast from a wall in the Peter Salter-designed Walmer Yard, for which she is the keeper. Even some bigger-name architects and designers have contributed refreshingly speculative pieces, such as Thomas Heatherwick’s enjoyably unpolished Study for a Vertical Town.
There is a good mix of scales too, from large pieces such as the red oak double-obelisk of Ugandan designer Jonah Luswata’s Moonlight Towers (2021) to a series of tiny delicate models including Jan Kattein Architects’ paper model of the temporary high street the practice designed at Elephant and Castle.
Photography: AJ
Other textural and provisional pieces include SEALAB’s study models for a housing scheme in Ahmedabad, and a richly layered, collaged triptych, called Cultivating Resilience; Oman / Zambia / Palestine by Lori Micu. There’s the usual complement too of beautiful drawings including a punchy orange squiggle of watercolour Kith and Kin by Anna Liu; Takero Shimazaki Architects’ sketch plan of The Yard Theatre foyer and a rather wonderful collage of traced plans by Angus Taylor: Study Map of Korail Bosti, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Photography: AJ
The focus on making also throws a spotlight on material. There is a great range of 1:1 details and building elements, many using natural materials, from a lime and hempcrete prototype model by Jonathan Tuckey Design to compressed earth blocks by Gianni Botsford Architects, Webb Yates Engineers’ woven cane sunshades, and a ‘sugarcrete’ slab from Nicholas Grimshaw. And all the predominant buffs and browns of these natural materials in turn visually ping against the vivid arsenic green of the plinths and walls.
A notable number of ceramic pieces are included, such as Bjork Haraldsdóttir’s lively clutch of black-and-white objects, obscurely titled The Home of the Opuntian Locrians and prototype tiles by Assemble of those used in their 2017 Art on the Underground project at Seven Sisters station.
Photography: AJ
There are several textile pieces this year too, including Spatial Stitching’s sewn sketch: Assembly House (1), Quilt City by Anna Russell and most enjoyably, an embroidered plan of Heathrow by Ben Stringer.
A vitrine of sketchbooks runs along one wall, containing freeform drawings that further underline the show’s exploratory feel; from EEL’s sketch of soft experimental houses to water-olours from Fiona McDonald of Matt + Fiona and a city study by Peter Barber, one of the few works by him included in the show.
Given all the constraints of the Summer Exhibition format, this all makes for one of the most lively and interesting Architecture Room displays for years.
The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition runs until 10 August 2023