Instructional and inspiring exhibition

(image from here)
On Sunday we went to see the Renzo Piano retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. (reviews here and here)  It was an opportunity also to see the newly joined buildings, the Piano exhibition is what I still think of as the Museum of Mankind, although the ethnographic exhibits have long been housed in the British Museum.  The galleries that contain the Piano displays are wondrous indeed, helped even more by a clear sunny day.
We found it to be a remarkably pleasing, informative, curiosity arousing, and even inspiring exhibition.  Such beautiful display, thorough, beautiful, and totally uplifting.

(image from here with more photos and a review)
There were three projects where I concentrated most of my time.  One was the Emergency Children's Surgery Centre in Kampala, Uganda.  An element which caught my imagination was the information about the use of packed earth blocks - not only the information, but the presentation of sample coloured blocks themselves.  An acrylic structure housed them in a way - as with all the displayed materials and samples - that made them aesthetic objects in their own right.

This is a Shutterstock photograph showing the displayed blocks.
Another project was the Menil Collection building - one of Renzo Piano's earliest buildings.  Elegance once more to the fore in the shape of the ventilation louvres.  Samples were hanging as part of the project display.
It is fascinating to read the client's brief, then to see the solution which lifts the heart.  As stated in this article, source of the image below, the elements of the solution, the parts which go to make a whole greater than them, somehow transmit a feeling of creative empowerment in the viewer.

I overwhelmingly was drawn to the project the display of which I just wanted to bring home: the Tjibaou Cultural Centre Noumea, New Caledonia.

(image above from here, with an article about the 'Piano Method')

(image above from here)
What struck me most about all the projects was the attention to situation, and the striving for the most elegant practical solution to each individual need.  This is an exhibition which will return to in my mind again and again, I'm sure.

We went through to the original RA building, passing this delightful courtyard between the two.  

Outside in the courtyard stands Cornelia Parker's PsychoBarn.  I was lucky enough to see a film of her visiting old barns in the USA in order to make this piece for the Metropolitan Museum Roof Garden, New York.  A fusion of two iconic images of buildings in the USA, I love the detailing - such as the roof 'slates' being carefully cut corrugated metal.  I find that Cornelia Parker's art is always taking me by surprise.

All in all it was a brilliant day of thinking about buildings.