How buildings tell the story of our lives

The Royal Academy is currently undergoing a radical make-over. Whilst the majestic exterior of Burlington House in Piccadilly won’t change, the interior will soon be unrecognisable. In what is being hailed as a ‘once-in-a-generation show’ (Rory Olcayto, deputy editor of Architects Journal), the Royal Academy has invited seven leading architectural practices from around the world to transform its 13 main gallery spaces into a series of large-scale installations, ‘interventions’ and ‘encounters’.  

The brief is ambitious: to give us a new perspective on architecture and help us to experience at first-hand how our surroundings impact on us. In order to avoid public preconceptions, the precise details of what is being built are being kept hush-hush, but it sounds as if the architects aren't holding back. Banish any thoughts of models, plans and photographs. This architecture exhibition is going to be different. Picture instead an immersive experience, complemented by scent, sound, structures and colour. 

In ‘Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined’, which opens on 25 January, ‘participants’ (as opposed to viewers) are encouraged to take a personal journey through the reinvented gallery spaces. They can pick their own path, pause, rest, sit, touch, climb, lie down even – basically, do whatever it takes to engage with how architecture affects our spirit. Responses to the exhibition will be gathered through photos, words and social media. 

‘Architecture is so often the background to our lives,’ says curator Kate Goodwin. ‘We don’t think about it, what it does for us. It’s practical, it’s functional, but when does it move beyond that and offer us something more?’

Whilst the architects are distinct in terms of their cultural backgrounds and experiences, coming from Ireland, West Africa, Japan, China and Chile, they share a strong humanist approach in their design ethos combined with an instinctual feel for space, traditions and materials. As Eduardo Souto de Moura, the Portugal-based architect who, alongside Álvaro Siza, designed The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in 2005, puts it: ‘We have to continue what others have done before us but using different methods of construction and materials’.

Another participating architect, Shelley McNamara, from Ireland, says: '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.' 

Kengo Kuma, who is based in Tokyo and Paris, refers to the Japanese notion of ‘ma’ which loosely translates 'pause' and refers to a consciousness of place. The ‘experience of space’ is more important than the building as a physical entity, he says. Chile-based Sofia von Ellrichshausen says of her approach to the brief: ‘We should generate some sort of interaction between the visitor and this inanimate thing that is architecture.” 

By the end of the experience, we will hopefully have an insight into how architecture can enrich our lives. ‘More than anything we hope that these experiences will echo beyond the gallery walls and make us aware of the sensory realm of architecture on a daily basis,’ says Goodwin.

To complement the exhibition there are soapbox talks, speedbox conversations, a talk on the increasing role of scent by Jo Malone, poetry, music, short stories, a live DJ, a secret yoga club and even a vegan feast. Let’s hope this exhibition lives up to its title and provokes stimulating debate on many different levels for some time to come.

Sensing Spaces runs at the Royal Academy from 25th January until 6 April. 

Adult gift aid tickets: £15.50 (adult: £14); students: £9, 12-18-year-olds £6