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<\/p>\nThis year\u2019s Royal Academy Summer exhibition follows recent ones in not having a dedicated architecture room, mixing architecture with art throughout the show. In one room, an Eva Jiricna blueprint-like plan is skyed on a wall of paintings; in another, a Hugh Strange model of his Stirling-shortlisted Hastings house nestles on a table next to a sculpture of a prone Bambi. More prominently, in a third, a large baby-blue sentinel-like Sam Jacob Studio model stands in a corner surrounded by other 3D sculptures.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it works \u2013 the Sam Jacob holds its own eyeing up a striking, red-spotted sculpture in the opposite corner \u2013 but often the pieces get a bit lost \u2013 like less engaging, quieter pieces of art randomly scattered around the exhibition.<\/p>\n
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This year\u2019s architecture co-ordinator, Peter St John \u2013 an RA since 2018, together with his partner at Caruso St John, Adam Caruso \u2013 sees this mix, however, as a fundamental part of the show.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think in the context of the summer exhibition, where you\u2019re trying to talk about architecture to a wide audience and not to a professional audience, it\u2019s good to mix the two things and see them together,\u2019 he says. \u2018The whole idea is that the summer exhibition is not a professional but a popular exhibition. People go there to be moved.<\/p>\n
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\u2018It\u2019s interesting to see architecture models, like little sculptures, infiltrating the other rooms. There\u2019s a conscious attempt to try and show architecture as ideas, as things in themselves.\u2019<\/p>\n
The\u00a0show\u2019s overall coordinator, artist Ryan Gander, chose the theme of the exhibition: \u2018interconnectedness\u2019. \u2018So the most obvious thing I could do was to genuinely mix art and architecture\u2019, says St John.<\/p>\n
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That said, the most concentrated room of architecture is the one curated by St John himself. Known as the Lecture Room, it sits to the right of the central rotunda and is one of the largest of the galleries. Even here, though, where the exhibits are a 50\/ 50 split between art and architecture \u2013 it\u2019s the art that is bigger and louder \u2013 with several large abstract works dominating the upper walls above gentler more intricate architecture drawings and photographs below.<\/p>\n
And while much of the space is taken up with two large tables of architectural models, many quite chunky, these are overshadowed by a huge cardboard Antony Gormley sculpture in one corner \u2013 \u00a0ironically, the only architecture-scaled piece in the show. You can even go inside this \u2013 although the interior is like an underwhelming orthogonal Merzbau. \u2018I like how it\u2019s crouching in the corner and somehow hidden when you come in, and then it\u2019s enormous!\u2019 says St John.<\/p>\n
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Once you zero in on the architecture exhibits, there is a lot to enjoy, including some gem-like drawings from Peter M\u00e4rkli, one of the architects whom St John specifically invited to exhibit\u2013 alongside Tony Fretton and Stephen Taylor and others. Some of the 2D works that shine the most are plans that nicely talk graphically about interconnectedness in their tracing of the embedded servicing and structuring of buildings, including a couple of works from Farshid Moussavi of her Houston and Montpellier projects, a lighting plan of Paisley Museum at Night by Amanda Levete and Price & Myers\u2019 structural reinforcement plan of David Kohn Architect\u2019s New College Oxford building.<\/p>\n
In choosing which 3D work and models to show, St John says: \u2018I\u2019ve tried to select models that are spatially, sculpturally engaging \u2013 that hold your attention themselves as objects \u2013 rather than those types of architects\u2019 models that try to explain everything at once.\u2019<\/p>\n
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And here, certainly, are models that do just that: an abstracted Arts and Crafts-like house with Lutyenesque curves by Stephen Taylor, and Heatherwick Studio\u2019s Birmingham Powerhouse Stadium, its factory-like chimneys emphasised by being picked out in colour.<\/p>\n
St John is fairly phlegmatic about the process of curating and making it all hang together as a show. \u2018I tended to choose paintings and drawings that were more abstract and not so figurative, so there\u2019s more connection with the architecture,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
\u2018You select a drawing for the quality of its line or use of colour and put it in the context of a painting, which is in some way related, visually or in content. So I was experimenting with that and trying to make the room work together. It\u2019s a kind of interesting but hopeless task!\u2019<\/p>\n
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What has resulted is undoubtedly a calmer, more ordered show than some in recent years, with less of a messy maker\u2019s feel \u2013 fewer chunks and bits of real material on display. As a result, it also feels a bit flat, with the architecture exhibits across the galleries too buried among the rest. I\u2019d vote for the return of the full-on cacophony of a curated architecture room in future years.<\/p>\n