Freestyle is an exhibition at the RIBA in London and explores key moments in the evolution of architectural styles over the last 500 years and its relationship to the evolution of mass media. Drawing on RIBA’s collections, Space Popular uses virtual reality to examine architecture styles of the past – from the Renaissance to postmodernism – while considering technology’s impact on contemporary buildings and spaces.
Photograph by Francis Ware
Style is ever present in architectural history: the rise of one leads to the fall of another. Although style can be deeply personal, its shifting appreciation and use in architecture is a collective practice. It is determined by the building technologies available at the time of its origin as much as by ideological movements, social hierarchies and cultural values.
Drawing on RIBA’s Collections, Space Popular has been commissioned to reconsider the richness of stylistic movements in architecture. Taking a cue from the influential treatise by Renaissance architect Sebastiano Serlio, they traces a narrative through architectural history, from the point when mass media enables style to spread freely, transcending cultural and geographical borders. Propelled by a succession of media formats prevalent in each historic period, Freestyle demonstrates the link between architectural design and popular culture, from the printing press to Pinterest.
Photograph by Francis Ware
Through an immersive environment that ties together rare books and stereoscopic prints with newly designed objects, Space Popular employs virtual reality to animate a discussion on the continuous evolution of architectural style – not only to examine styles of the past 500 years, but as the means by which to consider the impact of technology on contemporary and emergent styles.
A large-scale model of buildings in Britain, abstracted from RIBA’s Collections, depicts this transformation of distinct historical styles, while an information-rich carpet illustrates the technological tools relating to each style era.
Visitors are invited on a virtual reality tour through a four-act animation, exploring our consumption of architectural style across time periods to the present day -- where according to Space Popular we find ourselves cast us into a dizzying whirlpool of information and inspiration. On screen, styles can crystallise and dissipate at the speed of a click or swipe; how will architecture keep up?
The display culminates in a unique display of VR worlds imagined and produced by students at the London Design and Engineering University Technical College, as a window towards potential stylistic futures.
Photograph by Francis Ware
Photograph by Francis Ware
Photograph by Francis Ware
Photograph by Francis Ware
Photograph by Francis Ware
Photograph by Francis Ware
Photograph by Francis Ware
Timeline carpet, digitally print.
1:30 Model situated on the timeline carpet.
1:30 Model situated on the timeline carpet.
1:30 Model situated on the timeline carpet.
Timeline elevation.
1:30 Model situated on the timeline carpet.
Detail of timeline carpet.
Detail of timeline carpet.
Detail of timeline carpet.
Detail of timeline carpet.
Two dimensional capture from Act 2/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 1/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 2/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 2/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 3/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 3/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 3/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 3/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 3/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 1/4 of the immersive film.
Two dimensional capture from Act 3/4 of the immersive film.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT STYLE
A letter from Space Popular
The choppy waters of style are treacherous,
yet we navigated them lightly,
as one would a ball-pit rather than a daunting ocean.
Understanding style does not rely on having its meaning explained by an expert or historian. Style is recognised intuitively, and produced through repetition. Style is about nodding to each other through our influences, our preferences – and as architects, through our work. Style is not imperative; the strength of any style relies on its ability to communicate.
Trying to claim that a style is one’s own is like trying to own a piece of the wind and keep it safely in your pocket. Style can never be about the individual. Embracing style means abandoning the struggle towards individual genius, innovation, originality; it means dropping the saber and embracing the fact that nothing is created in isolation. Style is about us, about appreciation and exchange.
We cannot name a style as it is forming, but that does not mean we cannot perceive it. In fact, at times it feels like we perceive far too much: we live in saturated times, and it’s hard to know which bits of culture will calcify into an enduring style, and which will be discarded. Style needs your attention, because it does not exist unless you see it.
The speed, accessibility and vastness of the internet has thrown us into a dizzying freefall: our neurons feast and choke on an overdose of pattern recognition. If style is driven by cumulative and collaborative exchange, then the internet is no less than a style-making paradise.
At the same time, simulated reality is currently undergoing a paradigm shift. Representational media is moving from the visual plane – in front of us – to the experiential sphere around us.
The growing presence of immersive media means that virtual architecture is not only a reality; it is a lucrative and rapidly growing phenomenon. For the first time, instead of being represented by media, today architectural experiences can exist wholly inside it. It is time to review our description of architecture as something only physical.
Comparing the historic evolution of styles and media formats for this exhibition has revealed parallels and correlations too intriguing to ignore. What we have found – and attempt to demonstrate in Freestyle – is a path of continually expanding inclusivity in the production and recognition of style. The ambition of any media is to constantly widen its reach. If style depends on media, then its inevitable goal is to engage more of us and with greater intensity.
We do not attempt predictions about the future of style, or what architecture will look like; but rather how style will reach us and what that implies: that the inclusivity, openness and emancipatory character of new mediums can only be positive for architecture, even when it shakes ideas of authorship and the architect’s role; and that new social codes and freedoms may carry promises as well as threats.
There is only one inescapable reality – complex and multi layered – which is undergoing transformations that might change it beyond recognition. We do not have answers on whether these changes will be for better or worse. All we do know is that whatever currents do form in style, they will emerge from increasing freedom, and be shaped by our collective care.
Fredrik Hellberg & Lara Lesmes
Photograph by Francis Ware