{"id":205690,"date":"2025-10-17T03:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T03:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/205690\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T03:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T03:58:11","slug":"riba-considers-museum-of-london-building-as-new-home-for-its-collections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/205690\/","title":{"rendered":"RIBA considers Museum of London building as new home for its collections"},"content":{"rendered":"

The RIBA has been quietly progressing proposals for housing its collections since it announced the end of its arrangement<\/a> with the V&A. The South Kensington museum has been showcasing its collection since 2004.<\/p>\n

The AJ can reveal that the institute has settled on a standalone museum to store and showcase its huge archives, and is considering several locations with spaces between 1,800m\u00b2 to 3,700m\u00b2 in the capital.<\/p>\n

These include the former Museum of London site<\/a> in the City of London, although it is understood that discussions are still at a very early stage.<\/p>\n

This 1976 building on the edge of the Barbican estate, designed by Powell and Moya, is set to be demolished under plans by Sheppard Robson and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Their controversial London Wall West scheme was approved by then-communities secretary Michael Gove in 2024.<\/p>\n

However, work has not yet begun on site which is currently being occupied by meanwhile uses that include a sixth-form centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The RIBA is thought to have taken inspiration from V&A East Storehouse<\/a>, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which put the V&A\u2019s collections on display earlier this year.<\/p>\n

However, it is understood that the institute has gone cool on using a space at the same Here East location.<\/p>\n

The RIBA would not comment on the speculation.<\/p>\n

Under the current \u00a385 million House of Architecture programme, the RIBA has allocated around \u00a358.8 million to the Benedetti-designed refurb<\/a> of its 66 Portland Place headquarters in central London. A further \u00a326.2 million has been set aside for other improvements, including tech upgrades, a rebrand and the collections.<\/p>\n

The AJ understands that the latest proposal for the collections would increase the total House of Architecture budget by roughly \u00a315 million, potentially taking it to more than \u00a3100 million.<\/p>\n

The institute has been working on creating its own, public-facing museum for some time. Speaking to the AJ before his departure as RIBA president<\/a> on 31 August, Muyiwa Oki revealed its intentions to evolve its collections plans into an accessible museum.<\/p>\n

\u2018We have updated our thinking as to what is fundable,\u2019 he said, \u2018and updated our goals to have something similar to the V&A East Storehouse, where it\u2019s both a public attraction as well as back-of-house storage for the ever-increasing collection that we have instead.\u2019<\/p>\n

Current RIBA president Chris Williamson commented during his inauguration<\/a> last month that a \u2018museum of architecture\u2019 was one of the three core pillars of the House of Architecture programme.<\/p>\n

He called the project \u2018an amazing once in a lifetime opportunity, not just the building, but the website, the outreach, and the idea of a museum of architecture, and those three things are the House of Architecture programme.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The RIBA has been quietly progressing proposals for housing its collections since it announced the end of its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-205690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}