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.
