To the Whitechapel Gallery to see how the practice that transformed it (see RIBA J April 2009) is transforming it again, this time on its own behalf with two galleries devoted to its work. 

The last architecture show here was a grand tour through Mies van der Rohe’s design. Robbrecht en Daem’s Pacing through Architecture is inevitably smaller and happily more personal.

The largest gallery has the sense of a study room set out as tables laid with a portfolio of drawings and photographs, a far more amenable format for concentration than wall panels. Projected onto the walls films give a sense of the way the practice likes to work and exist. The camera pans through its Ghent office; note parallels to the gallery with its elegant and economical folding ply tables. Noises of nature, water and birds mingle with that of piano music as the sound tracks overlay one another; this is the world that Robbrecht en Daem like to surround themselves with. The splutter of the inkpen nib draws your eye to the expressive sketches.

The practice’s work is ‘rooted in the physical world’ they write. For the exhibition this manifests itself in the sculptures of regular artist collaborators; Isa Genzken’s concrete radio, bookends by Juan Muñoz. Works with each one are precisely located with drawings, plans and photos. But what unlocked the practice for me was just a few words on their own system of measurement using multiples of 3.5 and 7: ‘silent opposition to the Enlightenment derived meter’.

Robbrecht en Daem’s Pacing through Architecture is on until 20 June at the Whitechapel Gallery 77-82 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX. http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/robbrecht-and-daem-pacing-through-architecture