Drawings have long been used as a method for architects to represent their projects. However, architects sometimes make drawings to communicate a sense of space in a deeper and more meaningful way - in a manner that begins to venture into the realm of art. A new exhibition opening at London's V&A Museum this Saturday entitled Architects as Artists examines the overlapping relationship between architecture and art, and documents the many ways in which it is used and created.
The exhibition brings together approximately 50 works, drawing on the collections of the V&A and RIBA, and includes two "striking" digital renderings of FAT and Grayson Perry's ‘A House for Essex’, designs for an artist’s house by E.W. Godwin, one of Raphael's drawings of the Pantheon in Rome, a lithograph by Cyril Power of the staircase at Russell Square tube station, a watercolour sketch by Hugh Casson, a volume of architecture fantasies by the Russian architect Iakov Chernikhov, Tom Noonan’s depiction of the re-forestation of the Thames Estuary and drawings by Willian Burges, Augustus Pugin, Alfred Waterhouse and William Walcot and Italian Futurist Virgilio Marchi.
The exhibition will consider how architects have represented buildings in two dimensions to communicate three-dimensional space as far back as the Renaissance. It will also emphasize the ways in which drawings can serve to document historic architecture and an architect’s travels. In addition, the display will explore how drawings are used to communicate with a variety of audiences and how pictorial conventions are often adopted for clients or publications.
Architects as Artists marks the tenth anniversary of a partnership between the V&A and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), with artworks taken from the combined collections of both institutions. The latest exhibition follows on from previous successful collaborations between the V&A and the RIBA, such as a study of Maggie’s Centres, and an examination of Le Corbusier’s unrealised designs for a Baghdad Olympic stadium.
Title
Architects as ArtistsWebsite
Organizers
V&A and RIBA Architecture Partnership, Curated by Roisin InglesbyFrom
November 15, 2014 10:00 AMUntil
March 15, 2015 05:45 PMVenue
V&A + RIBA Architecture Gallery Room, located in room 128a at the V&A