Seven global architects to build sensory structures inside Royal Academy of Arts

Concept image of environment by Li Xiaodong, commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, detail.

The Royal Academy of Arts' lofty halls are to be transformed into a sensory architectural maze by seven firms from across the globe.

The exhibit, Sensing Space: Architecture Reimagined, has been brought together by Kate Goodwin, Drue Heinz Curator of Architecture of the Royal Academy and will open on 25 January, 2014. Rather than opening up the brief for the world's architects to compete for, Goodwinhandpicked the seven architecture firms based on how they embraced the exhibit's ethos of architecture as a very human, multi-sensory and evocative experience.

"I once spent an afternoon talking with an architect about his influences and references, and this was personally etched on my mind," Goodwin explained at the exhibit's announcement on 14 August. "He spoke about how haptic touch was central to his work -- the feel of a cool doorknob, a warm threshold under foot. A sense of atmosphere." Leaving that conversation, Goodwin says, she looked at everything with heightened senses, suddenly appreciating the way light would fall on the staircase she used everyday at work. "I felt very present and in the moment," she explained. This sense, of looking at and appreciating architecture anew for how it makes us feel, rather than its perfect lines and ratios, is what she hopes to achieve through Sensing Spaces -- to have the audience delight in and experience architecture in a totally new and visceral way.

The Academy will have just three weeks in which to make this happen, shutting down whole sections over the Christmas period to erect seven building sites within its walls. This is because, as Goodwin notes, the only way to get an audience to experience what she intends is to place them in "direct proximity with a space".

Architectural models and photos will be replaced with the real thing for the public to walk around, climb on and explore. "We're doing something we never do, which is encourage visitors to touch," said Goodwin.

Building a space specifically for the public to interact with and immerse themselves in issomething many galleries have already experimented with (notably the Light Show at the Hayward Gallery or the grownup playground that was Bodyspacemotionthings by Robert Morris at the Tate Modern). But for the RA this is an epic exhibit built on the shoulders of centuries of experience. Scottish architect Sir William Chambers was a founding member of the Academy in the late 18thcentury, and today it counts some of the biggest names in the business -- from Norman Foster to Zaha Hadid -- as members. The academy has also run a series of prestigious exhibits focused on architecture over the years, and has a series of ongoing architecture programmes.

The exhibit is also not designed for the sake of art or play, but aimed squarely at introducing architecture to a new audience or, alternatively, reawakening perspectives in an old audience. Describingthe exhibit's sentiment, Goodwin borrowed some words from composer and conductor Igor Stravinsky who said: "I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it". The hope is to give laymen and amateur experts alike a new and accessible way to experience architecture in their daily lives, by being reminded of what it was about it we once found so enthralling. As children it was easy to see a curve in the wall as an excellent spot to imagine a cave, or associate the hard cool wood of a stairwell handrail with being home -- it's this sense of possibility and familiarity the exhibit hopes to evoke.

Any information on the exhibits, which will not be mapped out for the public to explore in any specific route, was left deliberately vague by the curating team. It was noted though that it would be reflective of how the digital and virtual worlds increasingly influenceour lives, and how, though our lives have become more and more portable and our spaces have less need for distinct functions, we have a human reluctance to become homogeneous, and so architecture will come to focus on how a space makes us feel.

We do have some snippets of information of what to expect from the chosen architects, however.

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Seven global architects to build sensory structures inside Royal Academy of Arts