Summer 2019 installations at RIBA by You + Pea and Etcetera Studio

Two specially commissioned installations will occupy the ground-floor Architecture Gallery and the First Floor Gallery at RIBA’s Portland Place headquarters throughout the Summer. Both bring a fresh perspective – literally – to the work of notable architects whose drawings are held in RIBA’s collection.

‘Playing the Picturesque’, by You + Pea

On the ground floor, architect You + Pea takes on the work of John Nash, and his use of the picturesque. The practice has an interest in the use of video game technology as a tool for the design and communication of architecture (teaching a unit at the Bartlett on that subject), and the series of “follies” dotted throughout the gallery present interactive moving images within structures representing fragments of Nash’s buildings.

“We are drawn to the picturesque as an architecture of duration – intended to be discovered over time”, says You + Pea partner Sandra Youkhana. “We felt that video game technology would be the perfect pairing with that.”

Each folly is set up for a two-player ‘game’, in which each player stands on or steps off a square patch in the carpeted floor to steer through unfolding scenes around five of Nash’s projects, from a romantic ruin folly for Blaize Castle House to the nearby Park Crescent, shown in the context of Nash’s vision for a route from Regent Street to Regent’s Park. The cartoon-like animations are rendered in hot pinks and zesty yellows and greens, and feature herds of cantering deer and rays of digital sunlight falling on pastoral scenes – just as Nash’s own drawings do.

“The picturesque is not natural – it is highly choreographed and engineered”, says curator Shumi Bose. Likewise, the exhibition “should give visitors the sense that while it has been arranged for them, they are free to experience it pseudo-naturalistically”.

‘Above and Beyond’ by Etcetera Studio

Up on the first floor, Etcetera Studio (comprising architect Tom Parsons and artist Edward Crooks) takes on Lutyens, and particularly the Cenotaph, completed 100 years ago. Later studies have speculated that Lutyens followed a hidden geometrical order to arrive at the pleasing entasis of the tapering obelisk. The lines of the monument “trace the arc of a sphere 100 metres below the earth and taper to a point 300 metres into the sky”, say the designers. Thus, the structure “reveals only a fragment of a much larger imagined geometry, crossing the boundaries of space, time and memory”.

Building on this idea, Etcetera Studio has created a suspended installation comprising stacked boxes (itself a subtle nod to Lutyens buildings such as Castle Drogo and New Delhi) within which is a vivid blue and pink trompe l’oeil architectural interior composed of fragments of other works by Lutyens. It leads the eye up to a bright white oculus at the top, suggesting a view to the sky, “allowing visitors to imagine a space where alternative futures may be possible”.

‘Playing the Picturesque’
The Architecture Gallery, RIBA
Until 7 September 2019

‘Above and Beyond’
First Floor Gallery, RIBA
Until 6 July 2019

Additional Images