Sensing Spaces

This is comfortably the most disappointing exhibition I have ever seen at the Royal Academy. Being interested in architecture I thought this would be right up my street.

""Sensing Spaces : Architecture Reimagined" sets out to evoke the experience and power of architecture within a traditional gallery environment". Twaddle. What the RA have actually done is built the world's most expensive children's playground. £14 entrance fee and even going round twice I couldn't eke this out into more than a few minutes. There were some very happy middle-class seven year olds whizzing about the place, and one grumpy middle-aged lawyer.

The big feature is this thing that looks like the corner of a crude wooden temple. You can climb up and down the illars in spiral staircases, or up and down a ramp at the back. Great fun if you are five no doubt.

 So this is the top of the pillar/staircases. If they looked out onto a great view one might be more impressed.
But actually what they did give a view of is the beautiful gilding of the mouldings on the gallery which normally one only sees from afar.

  

 Coming down via the ramp feels like walking through packing crates

Even more kiddie friendly is this arch to which one is encouraged to insert coloured plastic straws to form a haphazard if eco-unfriendly matted roof

This construction by Kengo Kuma offered the best experience. A darkened room with thin wisps of bent bamboo illuminated at the bottom. Pointless but attractive, although not going to hold one's attention for long. Of course, like much abstract art, accompanied by meaningless babble. "I like to start with small things" says the artist, as if the typical architectural methodology was to start with an office block and whittle it down to a cottage.

 I think here we are meant to appreciate the forms of the blocks and the shadows they create.