RIBA show will use architects’ differing proposals for City of London site to explore their approaches to work
A new RIBA show is set to explore the work of Mies van der Rohe and James Stirling by using both architects’ approaches to developing the same plot of land in London’s Square Mile.
The institute said the upcoming exhibition would focus on the site of No1 Poultry, built out to a just-listed design by Stirling in the 1990s after the rejection of Mies van der Rohe’s 1960s Mansion House Square proposals, which covered a bigger footprint and included an 18-storey tower.
RIBA said the exibition, called ‘Mies van der Rohe & James Stirling: Circling the Square’ would give a new opportunity to examine “two iconic architectural schemes proposed for the same site” both of which were commissioned by architectural patron and developer Lord Peter Palumbro.
Although they spanned three decades, both schemes were controversial for requiring the loss of the listed neo-gothic Mappin & Webb Bank Branch building, however Stirling’s No1 Poultry has a lower impact on its surroundings than would have been the case for the Mansion House Square proposals.
RIBA said the “passionate debate” and high-profile inquiries both schemes attracted had distracted attention from the architectural ideas and ambitions of both architects, who worked at a time when the influences of pop art, high modernism and postmodernism “co-existed and collided”.
Even this month, the recent decision to list Stirling’s No1 Poultry at Grade II* prompted anger from its current owners, who said the move was a “disproportionate response” to minor amendments drawn up by Buckley Grey Yeoman, work on which is currently under way.
RIBA head of exhibitions, Marie Bak Mortensen said the Circling the Square exhibition would feature rarely-seen working drawings and newly-restored presentation models on loan from Lord Palumbro’s private collection.
“This exhibition returns the focus from the controversy back to the buildings themselves,” she said.
“With the distance of time, it encourages reflection on each project’s contribution to its own epoch, as well as their place in the continuum of architectural change and history in the City.”
The exhibition will run at RIBA’s Architecture Gallery from March 8 to June 25.
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