Royal Academy of Arts: Sensing Spaces.Current Exhibition.

Went with my friends to the Royal Academy of Arts to view the exhibition: Sensing Spaces Architecture Reimagined, this exhibition was also suggested to me by my Theory Tutor which is about directly experiencing architecture within a gallery environment. It's not just about seeing or the function of architecture but it's about how a specific architectural environment makes you feel, so it's about creating sensations within the audience, to educate but also to awaken viewers to possibilities of different architectural structures. Most  of the exhibitions I have seen of architecture including the one shown in the past at the Royal Academy of Arts  generally included models, photographs, drawings which you can observe from afar and you don't really experience them directly while with this exhibition instead the aim is for the audience to encounter the building directly, and at the same time check our responses with our senses: smell, sounds, material. Does the material for example make you feel oppressed or liberated?From the smell point of view I must say there was hardly anything, I couldn't smell anything. 

The Royal Academy of Arts invited seven architects from around the world: Grafton Architects (Ireland), Diebedo Francis Kere' (Burkina faso and Germany), Kengo Kuma (Japan), Li Xiadong (China), Pezo von Ellrichshausen ( Chile), Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura (Portugal), to create unique spaces for us to experience. They created architectural installations that play with light, movement, mass and interaction. Some are referencing and looking towards the past while being able to create something new to help our exploration of architectural environments, structures, so that we can then respond to them in our own personal way and also see the Gallery space in a new way, this thanks to the large size of some of the architectural pieces. You might find looking down on the gallery or going through a cave like construction and seeing the rest of gallery from an all together different perspective. Grafton Architects focus on light with simple minimalist lines.

One of my favourite structures was the one by Diebedo Francis Kere' because as a viewer I was allowed to intervene in the structure and change it. The installation was constantly evolving as viewers where coming in and adding long colourful plastic straws to it, I saw kids and adults laughing together doing something together even if we didn't know each other, which shows that the aim of the work is to create 'a 'community based activity for people to get together  and where the building is constantly changing  thanks to the participation of the audience'. It's a colourful, interactive architectural piece where everybody can leave their mark as you can see  the transformation of the structure in the pictures below.

While in Li Xiadong work which we went inside  a narrow maze like path made out of tall sticks of hazel  walking on small pebbles, rocks it made me feel that I was in a zen room ( one room was squared with mirrors so one could see oneself in the room walking) the act of walking and feeling the pebbles underneath my shoes was very relaxing  has he said himself: 'in Sensing Spaces I reuse the zen concept to psychologically remove the visitors from the space in London, so that the audience can comprehend the Zen Garden as the centre of his maze'. Not sure this was fully achieved for me as the dark brown twigs walls weren't tall enough  and I was very much aware of the Royal Academy of Arts beaming white ceilings above me. Also sections of  the floor was made out of acrylic, illuminated by bright leds which is got nothing to do with Zen Gardens and one can find more in nightclubs or  minimalist hotels.

Kengo Kuma was supposed to be an aromatic experience, one room impregnated with Japanese Cyprus the other with tatami to bring memory of his childhood but it wasn't for me as I couldn't smell anything ( even If I could smell tatami I wouldn't know what a tatami smelts like it was to specific) it looked like a thin structure of woven fragile bamboo going up in the shape of a bonfire, the rooms where dark and light from below. In the other room still dark the bamboo where going in a different direction still I couldn't smell anything and I bumped into someone else as I could hardly see due to the room being so dark..

I actually liked more the works by the duo Pezo von Ellrichshausen which was a huge wooden structure resembling Russian constructivism, the light wood gave it a homely solid feel  to it, my friend did run up the staircase inside of it. The piece consists of three towers and one can get to the top and look down on the rest of the gallery from a point of view which one could have never experienced without this piece and you could also see, through the wooden planks, the Royal Academy of Arts golden Angels, love them. They take the intimidating idea that big large buildings can give out as they allow the viewer with a more private, intimate temporarily ownership, thanks to the materials and the way it's designed that you can run if you want up the staircase in a free kind of way, saw lots of kids and adults alike run up the structure and looking around.

While the Portuguese Eduardo Soto de Moura's made copies of door cases, of high performance reinforced  concrete at the Royal Academy to two galleries of the exhibition, the arches mirror the existing doorways and are set at a specific angle. I went through them and felt like I was going though a portal that I might dematerialise like in Star Trek, one of my favourite pieces really strange how the mind works. He said about the installation that is about: 'the performance of form and continuity in architecture'.