Crude Hints towards an Architectural Academy of the Future

Inspired by Sir John Soane’s Museum, one of the world’s great architectural laboratories, this pop-up exhibition presents work by students from Intermediate Unit 13 at the Architectural Association speculating on the future of architecture education.

The projects stem from a series of briefs developed during the 2018–19 academic year, each of which resulted in a discrete body of work, whilst building towards the final project. An ‘exquisite corpse’ model of the Soane Museum reinterprets each room through the lens of a student’s particular ‘obsession’: an architectural effect that is both spatial and experiential. Interactive 4-D drawings of the Museum elaborate on the building’s playful performance. Speculative designs for pavilions for Lincoln’s Inn Fields aim to engage the public and develop architectural languages with rich atmospheres, juxtaposed narratives and choreographed sequences.

The final projects offer proposals for new architectural academies around London. Following Soane’s description of his house-museum as an ‘academy of architecture’, the students’ designs include spaces for discourse and debate, exhibition space and a private residence. Each project responds in its own way to the question: how can the architecture academy of the future act to engage the city and allow the city to influence pedagogy?