V&A reveals future architecture programme after RIBA split

The V&A has revealed details of its future architecture programme following its split from RIBA and promised that its commitment to the sector “remains the same”.

Tropical and South Asian architecture are among themes which the museum wants to explore in upcoming exhibitions, the museum’s keeper of art, architecture, photography and design Christopher Turner told Building Design.

Social housing will also be put into the spotlight as the museum seeks to bring attention to a broader range of architectural subjects, Turner said.

It follows the announcement that the V&A’s 20-year partnership with RIBA willcome to an end in 2027.

这一联合倡议于1999年发起，2004年举办了一个永久性展览，展示了RIBA的藏品，包括图纸和模型。

But the pair are now set to part ways, explaining in a joint statement last week that the “strategic priorities of both institutions have shifted”.

Turner said the move was an “amicable separation”, adding that the museum’s “commitment to architecture remains the same”.

He also said the RIBA exhibition will stay open with the five remaining years of the partnership giving the V&A time to do preparatory work on refreshing the gallery.

“Under Simon Allford the RIBA is focused on the house of architecture at Portland Place and we are reinventing our architecture programme,” he added.

> Also read:RIBA and V&A to end 20-year partnership

> Also read:What’s going on at the RIBA?

Turner is heading up a team of architecture and design curators who are working with architectural collections across the museum’s sites at V&A South Kensington, V&A East Storehouse and V&A East Museum.

Outlining the future direction of the V&A’s architecture displays, Turner said the museum will look more at culture.

“We have a very international outlook, and we are focusing a lot more on diversity and women,” he said, highlighting the V&A’s contribution to the 2021 Venice Biennale, “Three British Mosques”, as an example of the museum’s new direction.

The installation explored ways in which diverse immigrant communities had put their own spin on traditional vernacular mosque architecture and in turn reinvented the mosque for a British context.

A further example is this week’s opening at the V&A of “The Lebanese House” by the French-Lebanese architect, Annabel Karim Kassar, which explores themes around architectural conservation, identity and loss following the huge blast that devastated much of central Beirut in August 2020.

Turner said the museum’s 2017acquisition of a portion of the brutalist Robin Hood Gardens estate, in Poplar, East London, will also play an important role in the future architecture programme.

这栋1972年的建筑由艾莉森和彼得·史密森(Alison and Peter Smithson)设计，目前大部分已被拆除，但维多利亚与艾伯特博物馆拥有一个三层的部分，旨在作为野兽派运动的一个例子。修复部分高8.8米，宽5.5米，深8米，包括内部、前后立面和部分建筑的“空中街道”。

Despite a campaign to prevent demolition initiated by the Twentieth Century Society, Building Design and supported by architects from across the world including Richard Rogers and Zaha Hadid, a listing application for the building in 2015 was rejected.