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"Three London architecture practices (Lynch architects, Eric Parry architects and Haworth Tompkins) were asked to collaborate for the biennale on an installation depicting the city, but also demonstrating an attitude to design that seems characteristic of the place. Each of these architects takes the city as a given, as an existing common ground to be understood and adjusted with full reference to the context.
Each architect has brought a large-scale model of one of their buildings to the Arsenale, pieces they describe as inhabitable models. Each one demonstrates a relationship with the viewer that is articulated through art, each façade providing a setting for artworks. Behind these large fragments are a variety of media that describe their understanding of the historical and architectural richness of the London contexts in which they work."
Sir David Chipperfield
We commissioned and made a number of films for the exhibition. Rut Blees Luxemburg made her first film, 'London Dust', which is shown on an iPad on the table exhibit. David Grandorge's photographs of Westminster are also shown as a slide show on an iPad, accompanied by a sound track of interviews with Joseph Rykwert and Dalibor Vesely. Sue Barr and David Heathcote made a film 'Elements of the Scene', which is projected onto a wall. The table exhibit also includes sculptures by Hilary Koob-Sassen and Joel Tomlin, some of which were made specifically for our Victoria Street projects. Other objects on the table include brass-cast Glass-Reinforced Concrete panels by Graphic Relief of Timorous Beasties pattern 'Birdbranch'; drawings and collages of the projects; architectural models at various scales and two door handles that we have designed for Izé. All of the artifacts relate to our work on Victoria Street in Westminster: the library and affordable housing beside the Palace Theatre, Kingsgate House and Westminster Cathedral Piazza. The south facade of the library is built out of engineered timber by Eurban at scale 1:3. 'Inhabitable Models' is a phrase used by Sir John Summerson in his essay 'Heavenly Mansions' to describe the fascination of niches, and of the ability of the imagination to inhabit buildings, actually and by proxy, with sculpture.
