The exhibition responds to this context of architecture
and finance through the lens of a drawing by Joseph Gandy showing John Soane’s design of the Bank of England.
Soane’s
building had only recently been completed, but Gandy’s drawing (1830) shows the bank in ruins after some unspecified future
catastrophe.The strangeness of depicting architecture (and a key edifice of the British state) as a ruin
is the starting point for a collection of different projects. These also respond to Soane and Stirling’s interest in fragmentation
and reassembly, the reuse of pieces of history to construct possible futures.
Architecture here is thought of as
a product of varied and conflicting value systems: Economic value, symbolic value, use value, social value and so on. Buildings
are caught up in the exchange of value in many ways: Architecture can be a symbol of value (eg the temple or the skyscraper
as the image of a bank, or buildings used on bank notes), its value can be an economic asset, traded in the market, backed
by loans, atomised into credit default swaps and other complex financial instruments. Architecture is the physical site where
competing ideas of value are exchanged. Both the product of tensions and contradictions between different value systems. and
a means to imagine other possibilities.
With contributions by Studio Jacob and Aslı Çiçek,
Bamidele Awoyemi, CAN, David Kohn, DRDH, Drawing Architecture Studio, Fala, Hugh Strange, Jamie Foubert, Joseph Zeal Henry,
Kuehn Malvezzi, Madelon Vriesendorp, Maria Lisogorskaya, Mary Duggan, MBL architects, MOS, Muoto, Nigel Coates, Paradigma
Ariadné, Paul Anderson, Peter Wilson, Pier Paolo Tamborelli, Piovenefab, Point Supreme, Sam Chermayeff, Sam Jacob, Sean Griffiths,
Sergison Bates, Shahed Saleem, Space Popular, Supervoid, Witherford Watson Mann
Studio Jacob:
Sam Jacob
Production Team: Allen Bell, John Clayson, Eda Sefa Team: Hoda Balouchi, Christiane Braml,
Yurii Brytov, Mihaela Carpov, Anzhelika Chernytska, Meltem Çinar, Philip Emrich, Lucia Flir, Mohammad Sajad Ghaderi, Mariia
Gross, Melika Hadjarzadeh, Igor Ivanec, Ali Jafari, Asal Kavianifar, Miku Kawai, Erfan Khosravi, Jonathan Kielhorn, Mintong
Lu, Joel Nikles, Marlene Ortner, Jonas Ramoser, Mikael Ristmets, Byron Hayes Roberts, Xaver Roos, Anastasiia Seergeva, Matthew
Simpson, Lærke Nolsø Pommersgård Virkelyst, He Yan, Zhongzheng Zhang Supporting Faculty: Gerhard Brandstötter, Philipp Frei,
Sophie Grell, Benno Groer, Eldine Heep, Karl Holzer, Afshin Koupaei, Reinhold Krobath, Thea Moeller, Giacomo Pala, Roman Speiß,
Mathias Leberbauer, Sophie Luger
Contact:
sam@samjacob.comKindly
supported by Hypha Studios, recessed.space, Cheapside, Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Institute of Architecture at the University
of Applied Arts Vienna.
