Origins
A Project by Ordinary Architecture
15 October 2016 - 15 January 2017
Various locations around Burlington House
Main spaces:
Saturday – Thursday 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
Print Room: Tuesday – Friday, 10am–1pm and 2–5pm
Free
Friends of the RA go free
This autumn the RA has commissioned Ordinary Architecture to create a series of interventions around Burlington House that offer an intriguing contemporary counterpoint to the ‘origin myths’ of architecture.
The history of architecture is full of ‘origin myths’: stories of how and where architecture began. They range from the 18th-century notion of the "primitive hut" and 19th-century interests in animal skins and fabrics, to modernist conceptions of space. What makes these myths important is the way they describe the point at which building becomes culture, when the act of construction is imbued with meaning that can be read and interpreted.
Origins takes these myths as the starting-point for a series of five interventions around the RA's home, Burlington House, each dealing with a fundamental component of architecture: construction, space, shelter, decoration and precedent.
Guiding the creative process for Ordinary Architecture has been their belief that "the veracity of origin myths is less important than their use as a source of inspiration for new narratives". Rather than seeking simply to recount these myths in a literal way, Origins embraces erroneous theories, misunderstood histories, personal mythologies and speculative wild-goose chases. At times playful, witty and provocative, Origins asks us to look again at the myths, conventions and histories that guide how architecture is created and experienced.
Main spaces:
Saturday – Thursday 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
Print Room: Tuesday – Friday, 10am–1pm and 2–5pm
Free
Friends of the RA go free
In the front hall of Burlington House, images in the central section of the ceiling explore the meaning and relevance of the "primitive hut" within the context of how buildings are constructed today. These five panels are usually home to paintings by Benjamin West PRA (1738–1820) depicting the "Graces unveiling nature" and the four elements, which also provide another point of departure.
In the central roundel, a contemporary "primitive hut" is depicted from below. Around it the four segments each represent an element integral to the construction of architecture, corresponding to the subject of West’s absent imagery: ventilation (air), plumbing (water), groundworks (earth) and heating (fire).
In the frames either side of the main stairs are two large canvases depicting gridded spaces populated, respectively, by fluted classical columns and modernist I-beams. Orientation and point of view are made deliberately ambiguous, with distortions in perspective and the way the columns and I-beams appear abruptly from the top of the frame.
Further up the stair, the column and I-beam appear as real objects in the two opposing niches. Usually these niches contain bronze statues of the painters Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) and J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). Now, they serve to bring into focus the classical column and modernist I-beam as symbols of two distinct architectural philosophies, with opposing ways of thinking about space.
Above the Norman Shaw stairs two large wall hangings are installed, composed of (ethically sourced) animal hides. Each is printed with a repeating pattern of recognisable elements of wall or roof construction: brick, tiles, stone cladding and shingles. The hides are hung from several points to reveal their softness and pliability, thereby subverting the rigid and load-bearing qualities of the materials represented. In this way, the hangings challenge the connection between authenticity of materials and structural stability, and suggest decoration as integral to architecture’s function as shelter.
Two new fragments of cornice are displayed on the classical cornice of the Main Galleries, built by the architect Sydney Smirke RA (1798–1877) when the Royal Academy of Arts moved to Burlington House in 1868. Although at first glance the cornices appear non-figurative and apparently unrelated, closer inspection reveals their profiles to be the coastlines of Essex and Cornwall which have simply been extruded.
The cornices can still be read as abstract objects. But to those who recognise the shape of their profile, they appear as architectural elements with a specific meaning that connects to personal myths and biographies: a trip to the seaside, childhood holiday or simply part of everyday life.
At the Library of the Royal Academy of Arts a number of books and drawings from the RA’s collection are on display, presented as a series of competing and colliding "origin myths". These range from a rare 16th-century edition of the treatise by Ancient Roman architect, Vitruvius, to works by contemporary architectural theorists such as Joseph Rykwert (b. 1926). Interestingly, many of these works deal with the same sources and ideas, which are re-worked and accented according to each author’s pre-occupations, thereby creating yet another set of "origin myths".
A new object is also on display – The Greengrocer’s Order – which is the product of Ordinary Architecture’s own playful interpretation of the myths concerning the origins of the classical orders. The Greengrocer’s Order is inspired by the acanthus leaves of the capital of the Corinthian order, but replaces this motif with plastic ‘fruit and veg’ piled up as contemporary votive offering that celebrates the everyday architecture of the high-street shop-front.
About Ordinary Architecture
Ordinary Architecture was founded by Charles Holland and Elly Ward at the end of 2013. Prior to starting Ordinary, both partners worked at FAT Architecture where Charles was a director for nearly twenty years.
The practice’s name refers to an interest in popular culture and an architecture that draws inspiration from the ordinary and the everyday. They work at a diverse range of scales from that of the city masterplan to the domestic interior. Both Charles and Elly are involved in teaching. Elly runs a studio at the University of Westminster and Charles is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Brighton.
Related articles
How to read it: "the origin of the Corinthian order"
21 October 2016
