With a display on Beijing’s Caochangdi in our Architecture Space, our curator discusses the Ai Weiwei-designed buildings of this artists’ region, and their place in a rapidly developing city.
Rebecca Milling describes the story of how straws from our ‘Sensing Spaces’ exhibition travelled to Swawou Layout Foundation Primary School for Girls, Sierra Leone.
From exhibitions, talks and events at Clerkenwell Design Week to the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.
What happens to the works in our exhibitions once the final visitor has departed? In the case of ‘Sensing Spaces’ we’re offering the exclusive opportunity to take home your favourite pieces.
Curator Kate Goodwin explains the process behind the development and creation of this exhibition.
More than any other architects, Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura have made me look with a fresh eye at the Royal Academy’s galleries and architecture.
It may seem a strange term for an architect to coin, but Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has been developing an idea of what he calls “weak architecture”.
The emerging installations give me a thrill as I walk through the galleries, checking drawings, looking at details, observing the teams solving all sorts of practical issues on site.
Shortly after I had been sent the initial ideas by Siza and Souto de Moura I headed into the Main Galleries to consider how they would work.
Christmas and the holiday period was rather a surreal time. While others were thinking about feasts and wrapping presents, our minds were reeling with schedules of lorries and orders for installation.
When putting together this group of architects I purposefully sought out those who would bring a variety of perspectives on how we think about architecture and the spaces around us.
It was when sitting with Li Xiaodong in a courtyard garden in the Huairou district, a mountainous area near the Great Wall, an hour north of Beijing, that many of his observations of Chinese culture and sensibilities became much clearer for me.
Sensing Spaces will transform the RA’s Main Galleries with structures, light, sounds and smells. Hear from behind the scenes as the exhibition installation gets underway.
Curator Kate Goodwin visits a “heroic” house perched high, overlooking the ocean in Chile.
Spending some time with the Chilean architects who ‘consider’ rather than ‘design’.
In my last post, I discussed how Grafton Architects wanted to explore what ‘being present’ in an architectural space means. But what spaces have been in their minds as they design their interventions to our galleries? Which spaces have awakened their senses?
“Buildings tell the stories of our lives in built form… We walk through and feel spaces with our whole bodies and our senses, not just with our eyes and with our minds. We are fully involved in the experience; this is what makes us human.”