Having covered the designs for the ‘1:1 Architects build Small Spaces’ at the V&A Museum in the latest issue of the RIBAJ, it was interesting to pop along to the opening and see the installations in the flesh.

And the feeling I came away with is that their placement was as important as the actual installations themselves. But maybe that’s just the fact that the architects managed to successfully interpolate the context as well as their own programmes for the shelter. So, below, as seems the thing to do in these fickle times, I’m giving my countdown of the seven designs, and why I think that they’re in the order they’re in.

At No. 7: Vazio S/A’s ‘Spiral Booths’: To be honest, I was more convinced by the description of Teixeira’s earlier experiments in Brazil with his ‘guerilla theatre’, connecting stages beneath the concrete hillside homes of Belo Horizonte. The ‘pop-up’ approach to architecture has a rawness and immediacy that’s instantly recognizable to anyone seeing it. The problem here is there’s just too much self-consciousness in the design to the point where the installation merely becomes the trope for an architectural intent. Not so much an architectural space for theatre as an idea for an architectural space for theatre. As such, it’s nicely made but ultimately unresolved.

At No. 6: Terunobu Fujimori ‘Beetle’s House’: There’s something absolutely compelling about Fujimori’s assertion that a home cannot truly be defined as one if it does not have a fire in it-  but the statement also highlights the shortcomings of his installation design. Fujimori’s mini teahouse looks endearing and convincing, but once you’re inside in its slightly tea smelling interior the problem just stares back at you- a dead hearth. Health and Safety ensured that the all-important fire will never be lit. The house, sitting on stilts does give a sense of separation from the earth- a key idea for Fujimori, but we can only wonder what the experience would have been had they carried out the original idea to suspend the teahouse from metal wires attached back to trees outside the museum’s main entrance.

At No. 5: Rural Studio’s Woodshed: Andrew Freear’s teaching at Auburn University in Alabama sounds absolutely intriguing- getting his architecture students to actually spend the four years of their degree going out into the local community, designing and building in a way that is affordable, sustainable and ultimately beautiful. The Woodshed is a stunningly simple space which tries to convey the idea that timber buildings dry out and move in a highly sophisticated way. It’s timber beautifully constructed and heat treated, the shed burnt exterior is however, somewhat lost in the darkness of the V&A’s Porter Gallery. Not sure also if the idea of the movement in encapsulated in a stainless steel tie so architecturally sophisticated and discreet that its presence will probably not be registered by most of the visitors.

At No. 4: Outside/ Inside Tree: Just like Carlos Teixira’s Spiral Booths, I was rather worried that Sou Fujimoto’s idea would look better on paper than it would in reality- it certainly looked like a total mess when I visited it being constructed in the workshop, and the feeling was that it was such an overly architectural concept that it probably wouldn’t translate into the finished piece. Surprisingly, it does. The multi-faceted perspex construction benefits well from its positioning in the ante-room to the architecture galleries and its crystalline facets throw light everywhere to the point where the object almost dematerialises. Oddly, the hundreds of plastic ties holding the whole thing together was a value engineering exercise, whose serendipitous use gives the allusion of thick cherry blossom, seductively suspended in a plastic medium.

At No. 3: Ratatosk: Helen and Hard’s idea was actually a very sophisticated architectural concept interrogating the virtual and the real, the artificial and the natural, that they wanted to investigate via their installation. It could have gone the way of some others, but the simplicity of the raw timber stumps counterpointed against their finely milled interior faces is both stunning and contemplative. There’s some interesting ideas of scale going on as well- Ratatosk is actually much smaller than one imagines from the drawings, and after seeing it I wondered if the installation should have been more fetishised than it was. The original visualisations for the design saw the interior faces coated in a dull gold- seeing the reality made me think that a reflective gold coated surface might well have raised the installation from the beautiful to the sublime. 

At No.2: Ark: I was actually highly circumspect of this design when it was described to me by the architects Rintala Eggertsson, as it just seemed too simplistic, obvious and trite, but the timber book tower that the firm have built in the stairwell of the staircase leading up to the National Art Library is anything but. The shelves that form its walls combind with the perception of the ‘paper’ edges of the books that line them lends them a structural counterpoint to the perception of the ‘paper thin’. As one ascends, the timber tower wobbles slightly, giving the impression that one has climbed a tree and is swaying in the treetops. It also achieves the ambition of actually creating a space in which one would like to linger. The books invite contemplation, and the seats within, the opportunity to stop and rest. Rintala Eggertsson’s Ark therefore acieves its objectives both on a structural, sensory and metaphorical level. 

And No. 1: Inbetween Architecture. Studio Mumbai’s intervention in the Cast Galleries of the V&A is the one that most uses its context as the driver for the installation’s form; and to my mind, this fact really contributes to raising this one to the top slot. Bijoy Jain’s idea was originally to take an urban ‘shanty town’ hut, built between two structures behind their Mumbai offices, and cast it perfectly from plaster, courtyard tree and all, and transpose it into a new cultural context where it can be analysed and reinterpreted. What’s amazing is that, though it’s tiny, it’s actually a collection of highly sophisticated small spaces that have a palpable sense of the labyrinthine- you can surprisingly lose someone in here. Studio Mumbai’s installation goes to the core of what the nature of shelter is- a key theme for the show, by representing the most basic of shelters and raising it to the level of art. This is not only highly considering of the original as well as the new context, but is also becomes a deeply emotive piece. For that reason I believe ‘Inbetween Architecture’ to be this show’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Installation shots of 1:1 - Architects Build Small Spaces
15 June – 30 August 2010
© V&A images