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Architectural Communication

The extraordinary townhouse that is Sir John Soane’s Museum has played host to many exciting exhibitions drawing synergy from the riveting interiors. Highlights of the last nine years include shows featuring Alcantara (microfibre fabric) and Space Popular (multidisciplinary design practice); Emily Allchurch (artist); William Shakespeare (a certain playwright); and Sarah Lucas (artist). The latest is the first UK retrospective since his demise of the work of Richard Rogers, leading exponent of High Tech architecture. And so, at 13 Lincoln’s Inns Fields two architects who had a passion for materials, light and life meet posthumously.

Will Gompertz, Director of Sir John Soane’s Museum, opens the exhibition: “Rogers Pink completely fits with the vibe of the good weather and also aesthetically fits with the vibe of Soane as next door in the South Drawing Room there is this extraordinary colour field of yellow which is called Turner Yellow – not Turner the painter but Turner the designer – which he very specifically chose and then you’ve got the Rogers Pink in this exhibition. I think Soane would approve of this enormously and also he would have loved Richard as a man. They would have had so much in common.”

“The exhibition started three weeks after I began as Director here and Richard’s son Ab got on the phone and said, ‘Can I come round with an idea?’ He came round and five minutes later we had a show! Ab’s idea was for the Soane to show the first retrospective of Richard Rogers in this country since he sadly passed. And the answer was emphatically yes.”

Ab provides a tour of the exhibition Talking Buildings: “It’s a simple show based on eight pivotal projects across his career. It’s really about this escalating idea how the buildings talk to each other. I think Richard really wanted his architecture to talk to the people, to improve the quality of the citizens’ lives, to celebrate the streets, to get people to look up at the sky, to enjoy the public space and to really look at the responsibility of the building to respond to its uses.”

“This ongoing conversation started with the Zip Up House which is a solution to social housing. It is an object made out of prefabricated units, incredibly well insulated, that can continuously grow and expand. He was looking at sustainable issues before there was awareness of them in 1969. The house he designed for his mother and father also in 1969 creates this very open space where there’s no specific programme and you’re free to play with it as you will. You can roll out of the building and into the grass – it’s very free, almost boundaryless.”

“And that plays into the Pompidou Centre in Paris where 50 percent of the site is given to the public; you see all the services taken from the inside to the outside to free up the programme of the interior. And you can argue that this free programme that exists inside the Pompidou also exists inside the Zip Up House. This escalation goes on and then he creates Lloyds Building – this shining armour sitting in the historical setting of the City of London. They’re both very brave and radical buildings. Lloyds was the youngest building to be Listed in the UK.”

“We go on to the Millennium Dome, a building which was quite controversial at its time although it came in on budget and on time. This huge roof held a world beneath it. The Dome was meant to be up for one year but instead 25 years later like the Eiffel Tower it becomes this icon of the capital. And from there we go back to social housing looking at The Treehouse which is a collection of ‘shoeboxes’ fabricated from cross laminated timber, rapidly assembled as a tower and very low cost. The roof of one becomes the garden of the next creating these ‘shoeboxes’ with free programmes.”

“We see this conversation and idea continue when we finally end up in the drawing gallery which takes us back to the Zip Up House’s very muscular cantilevered box. It is designed like a telescope with a straight line of viewing out to the landscape. Talking Buildings is a quick journey really trying to work around this conversation and Richard’s passion for creating civic architecture which is generous to the citizens and generous to the streets, while trying to provoke the role of the developer and the council to be bigger and more integrated.” This show adds yet another layer of brilliance to the immersive multimedia experience that is Sir John Soane’s Museum.

The Cloud Capped Towers Shakespeare in Soane’s Architectural Imagination

Hot on the unclad heels of Sarah Lucas’s show at Sir John Soane’s Museum comes an exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. London is awash with Shakespeare festivities from Somerset House to Dr Johnson’s House. The Soanian exhibition is the best, the most intriguing, and is set in a superior interior. The playwright’s connection to the architect is far from tenuous. Quite the opposite in fact.

“Soane comes halfway between Shakespeare’s time and ours,” muses Dr Frances Sands, Curator of Drawings and Books at the museum. Last spotted leading a tour of 20 St James’s Square, Fran is one of a trio of erudite academics on duty. “The bard’s reputation was really only fully established in the 18th century Georgian period. He wasn’t a national hero before then. It kicked off, in part, with the actor David Garrick. And the Shakespeare Ladies Society! Soane, as an educated gentleman, was a collector of Shakespeariana.”

Professor Alison Shell of University College London, Guest Curator of the exhibition, adds, “Bibliophilia gathered pace as the 19th century progressed. Bibliomania! The madness of books! Soane acquired all four Shakespeare folios, a feat a private collector could never match now. One of the folios belonged to James Boswell. Shakespeare was something of a religion to Soane who venerated great men. Soane was a Romantic with a capital R!”

The exhibition space occupies two first floor galleries in the house to the left of the museum’s famous façade. “It was too tempting not to get out all four folios to make the point! Lovely!” smiles Alison. “It’s a celebration of the imaginations of Soane and Shakespeare.” The patronage of Dr Johnson’s friend Garrick is on display through actors’ portraits and theatre designs. Garrick commissioned both Soane and Robert Adam so another celebrated architect is represented. Indeed, Soane astutely purchased the full set of Adam’s office drawings.

Tying various artistic strands together is Soane’s drawing of George Dance’s front elevation of the Shakespeare Gallery on Pall Mall. Short lived and commercially disastrous, the design of the Shakespeare Gallery nonetheless was inspirational to Soane. Its flying saucer domes would later reappear at the Dulwich Gallery.

Museum Archivist Sue Palmer points to a diary, “Rather charmingly, when Eliza and he went to visit their son studying architecture in Liverpool, Soane noted their visit to plays in Stratford-upon-Avon. So that’s rather fun!” All three academics concur that Soane was the most literary architect Britain has ever had. In 10 out of his 12 Royal Academy lectures he quoted Shakespeare. His interest in theatre, a medium obsessed with illusion, befits the great conjurer of space. Soane promoted Shakespeare as the supreme embodiment of English literature. The architect never knowingly undersold his talent. No doubt Soane was heavily hinting that he was the supreme embodiment of English architecture.

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