Re-imagining architecture through the senses

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‘Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined’ at London’s Royal Academy is a ‘sensational’ exhibition in more ways than one, as Rosalind Ormiston reports

A sensational exhibition devoted to contemporary architecture is currently showing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (RA). ‘Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined’ (until 6 April 2014) brings together seven international architectural practices; each has been given a gallery space to create works that evoke the power that architecture has on our lives.

Three factors are at its core: ‘the nature of physical spaces, our perception of them, and their evocative power.’ (‘Sensing Spaces’ Gallery Guide). In the exhibition there is no planned route. At the entrance point in the Octagon room there are brief introductory wall texts. One asks the question ‘When are you aware of the spaces you inhabit?’  From this starting point one can go in any direction to discover the architectural installations.  There is a leaflet with a map that accompanies ticket admission. Visitors are invited to touch, climb, move through or walk under or around each work, to physically explore and experience the textures, the scents and the sounds. Visitors are encouraged to take photographs and intervene between space and architecture to capture their personal experience.

Curator Kate Goodwin, RA Drew Heinz Curator of Architecture, conceived the idea for the exhibition over two years ago. She was keen to do something to represent contemporary architectural practice. She invited her chosen architects, from six countries and four continents, to imagine architecture within the RA gallery spaces and in the RA entrance courtyard. They are:  Grafton Architects (Ireland), Diébédo Francis Kéré (Germany/Burkina Faso); Kengo Kuma (Japan); Li Xiaodong (China); Pezo von Ellrichausen (Chile); Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura (Portugal). 

The first and the last installation to be seen is Álvaro Siza’s ‘birth of a column’. It responds to the experience of entering and leaving the Annenberg Courtyard, the RA front entrance just off Piccadilly, where one is surrounded by the Neoclassical façades of Burlington House. Siza’s installation connects to the building and its relationship to the London streets outside. There are three elements: one column at the entrance, one lying down with its capital beside it, a third column upright, close to the statue of the RA’s first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Inside the building Siza’s architectural partner Eduardo Souto de Mouro reflects on the thresholds of gallery rooms. His installations focus on the framing elements of architecture, inserting new doorways at 45 degrees from the wall plane. They are beautiful creations in thin concrete, and mirror the intricate detail of the original frames.

Grafton Architects is the practice of Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelly McNamara. Their office location on Dublin’s busy Grafton Street reflects their interest in the street spaces around them.  At the RA, Farrell and McNamara aim to create a spatial experience. The first of two galleries explores ‘lightness’. Here natural daylight falling on suspended objects is amplified by overhead artificial lighting to animate the gallery space. One should experience a ‘waterfall of light’.  The second gallery with its darkened interior explores ‘weight, containment and carved out space’.  Walls look weighty and cut-away corners of the roof expose dim light from above. At centre a light-filled lantern draws visitors across the darkened space.

Two of the most mysterious architectural spaces are Kengo Kuma’s ‘Pavilions of Incense’, two 5-metre high rooms filled with bamboo and scent. To construct them, Kuma used whittled bamboo sticks 4mm in diameter to create delicate structures, using minimal materials to maximum effect. Kuma calls one the architecture of reality, filled with the aroma of hinoki from scented tealights.  The other, the architecture of the void, is scented with tatami. Both rooms, experienced in darkness except for the tiny tealights, respond to his interest in the sensations of inhabiting space.

Perhaps the most peaceful is Li Xiaodong’s wooded maze. He said he wants visitors to feel they are on a journey of discovery, walking through snow in a forest at night, represented by 21,200 branches of hazel and a white floor lit from below. The maze ends in a mirrored Zen garden. This is the only installation to have a designated entrance and exit.

And now for a walk up to the top of Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichausen’s small open room elevated on four monumental columns. Entrance is either via circular staircases within the columns or by ramp. Either way takes you up to discover the sensation of experiencing the gallery space from the ceiling.  And finally to the fun of Diébédo Francis Kéré’s tunnel pavilion, made from 1,867 rectangular panels of honeycomb plastic, which relates to the architecture he has created for his hometown of Burkina Faso. Visitors to his installation can decorate it with multi-coloured giant straws, poked through holes in the honeycomb panels. In Africa creating a building is an interactive process. The RA weblog reveals the inventiveness of Kéré and straw-wielding gallery-goers.

Until April there are many activities taking place in the galleries’ architectural spaces to interest a wide variety of visitors. They include the meetings of the Secret Yoga Club, free gallery talks, family workshops, and on Saturday, 29 March a ‘Sensing Spaces Symposium’.