Now in its 244th year, the exhibition continues the tradition of showcasing work by both emerging and established artists in all media including painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, architecture and film. This year’s Summer Exhibition, coordinated by Royal Academician Tess Jaray, attracted 11,000 entries, the highest number in its history, and only approximately 1,500 were selected to go on display.

The exhibition begins in the Wohl Central Hall, whose bright red walls pay homage to Matisse’s 1911 painting ‘The Red Studio’ while framing a diverse range of work that introduces visitors to the richness and variety of work on display throughout the Academy. From this space, visitors can glimpse the architecture gallery straight ahead. This year, this thematic gallery was curated by architects Chris Wilkinson and Eva Jiricna with the purposeful intention to blur the boundaries between architecture and the fine arts.

It is clear from exploring the architecture gallery that this discipline has never been granted such an important role in the recent history of the Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibitions: not only do the drawings and models overflow from the architecture gallery into other rooms, but a large installation by Chris Wilkinson has taken over the Annenberg Courtyard. Titled ‘From Landscape to Portrait’, Wilkinson’s piece comprises a series of 11 wooden frames twisted through 90 degrees on a reflective basis that also incorporates a seating area for visitors.

Throughout the galleries of the Academy, the emphasis has been on developing a concerted approach to appreciating and exploring the potential of colour and shape, and no other space does it better than Gallery III, the grandest space in Burlington House. Curated by Tess Jaray, rather than presenting large art works in its vast space, this room contains a large quantity of smaller colourful paintings displayed on its grey walls in an undulating and flowing layout, demonstrating that work of a more modest scale can be as powerful as larger work.

The remaining galleries have been curated by artists Barbara Rae (with a focus on exploring landscape architecture and the work of Scottish and Irish artists), Peter Freeth and Chris Orr (who chose to emphasise the artisanal and tactile qualities of print as well as the diversity of large and small scale prints, including artists books – a creative category of work that has been garnering increased visibility in recent Summer Exhibitions), Mali Morries and Humphrey Ocean (who selected a diverse range of work by Royal Academicians), Stephen Chambers (whose curatorial criteria focused on the variety of media and materials used to produce art), and Alison Wilding (who selected varied sculptures ranging in scale, content and ambition).


The Royal Academy of Arts was established by King George III in 1768 with one of its founding principles being to ‘mount an annual exhibition open to all artists of distinguished merit’ to finance the training of young artists studying at the Royal Academy Schools. This exhibition has been held every year without interruption since 1769 and, in its current embodiment as the Summer Exhibition, it continues to play a significant part in raising funds to finance students through the sale of most works displayed.

The Royal Academy of Art’s 2012 Summer Exhibition opens to the public on 4 June and will close on 12 August 2012.

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The competition’s jury described the scheme as “a collection of linked pavilions, each orientated to respect the city grid, and anchored by a lookout tower” and found the design “deeply respectful of the site and setting, creating a fragmented, non-hierarchical, horizontal campus of linked pavilions where art and society could meet and inter-mingle. The connections between the pavilions have been well considered to permit a continuous gallery experience, if required.”

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The residences will be offered in 60 different optional floor plans with custom-designed interiors, and will have two attended lobbies with 24-hour personalized concierge services and valet parking. In addition, the complex will feature a fitness centre and a spa, as well as and ample gardens, pools, and entertainment spaces, including a club room with a bar, a private cinema, a library, conference rooms, and a kindergarten.

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Nick Elias, from the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) received the highest design prize of the evening, the RIBA Silver Medal (awarded to the best design project at Part 2 – Diploma/Masters level) for ‘PoohTown’.

Simon Dean, from Kingston University, was awarded the Bronze Medal (for best design project at Part 1 – degree level) for ‘Flow, 1944’.

Jasper Ludewig was awarded the Dissertation Medal for ‘Made Ground: A spatial history of Sydney Park’, submitted by the University of Sydney, Australia.

Silver Medal High Commendation:
Justin Cawley from the University of Sydney for ‘An Ark for Endangered Atmospheres’

Silver Medal Commendations:
Yannis Halkiopoulos from the University of Westminster for ‘Brooklyn Co-operative’
Louis Sullivan from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘The Living Dam’

Bronze Medal Commendations:
Samuel Little from London Metropolitan University for ‘City Frame: The reappropriation of Maple House’
Emily Priest from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘Rong Xhan Safehouse’
Ho Yeung Tsang from the University of Hong Kong for ‘Urban Living Transition: Vanishing heritage of Hong Kong residence’

Dissertation Medal High Commendation:
Ekaterina Tikhoniouk from University College Dublin for ‘Towards a Common Ground for Play: Examining the history of play and playgrounds in Dublin’s Liberties’

Dissertation Medal Commendation:
Leon Fenster from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, for ‘Exilic Landscapes: Synagogues and Jewish architectural identity in 1870s Britain’

Serjeant Awards for Excellence in Drawing:
Part 1: Oliver Riviere from the University of Brighton for ‘The Institute of Concrete Poetry’
Part 2: Adam Bell for the University of Greenwich for ‘The Restored Commonwealth Club’

The UK office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) also awarded the SOM Foundation Fellowships UK, selected from this year’s entries for the RIBA President’s Medals, to Kent Gin from the University of East London for ‘Cultural Perforation of Madrid, Disruption of the Defined’ and Mike Lim from the Royal College of Art, for ‘Untitled, 2014. Mixed Media’.

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n his description of the project, Lord Foster described the design for the new airport as pioneering “a new concept for a large-span, single airport enclosure, which will achieve new levels of efficiency and flexibility – and it will be beautiful. The experience for passengers will be unique. Its design provides the most flexible enclosure possible to accommodate internal change and an increase in capacity. Mexico has really seized the initiative in investing in its national airport, understanding its social and economic importance and planning for the future. There will be nothing else like it in the world.”

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Located one hour outside of Lisbon, and five minutes from the city of Évora (a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1986), the complex is surrounded by olive tres, holm trees and cork trees, and it features a resort with 56 private residences, restaurants, a spa and a gym. Inspired by the typology found in the Portuguese villages of the area, the residential  areas lead to a central courtyard that offers services and public spaces, including a large outdoor pool with an adjacent bar commanding views of the enveloping landscape.

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The store houses Valentino’s womenswear, menswear and accessories lines across three floors where grey marble coexists with black steel, aluminium and brass. Two other Valentino stores (one in Aspen, Colorado, and the other in Miami’s Design Distric) are scheduled to open this year in the USA, a market that accounts for approximately 25% of the label’s global sales.

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Located in historic Natchitoches, Louisiana (a small city with a population of just under 20,000 inhabitants) the building occupies 28,000 square feet on the banks of the Cane River Lake, and was built at a cost of $12.6 million. Containing two contrasting collections formerly housed in a university coliseum and a nineteenth century courthouse, its design mediates the dialogue between sports and history, past and future, container and contained, while evoking the region’s rivers and plowed fields with sinuous molded stone interiors and earth-colored exterior sheathing.

In contrast with the patinated exterior shell, the flowing interior emerges at the entry in the form of a foyer sculpted out of 1,100 digitally milled cast stone panels whose shaped surfaces seamlessly integrate all building systems. From the foyer, the remaining internal spaces were conceived to flow visually and physically together, and were arranged to accommodate exhibitions, educational activities, and the building’s administrative areas.

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Occupying 15,000 square meters distributed across 15 floors, the building provides new studios, laboratories and workshops, exhibition areas, multi-functional classrooms, a lecture theatre and a communal lounge to over 1,800 students and staff of the school’s disciplines of Industrial & Products Design, Visual Communication, Advertising, Digital Design and Environmental Design.

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The decision to host a runway show in your own home is a brave and yet challenging one on more levels than one can fathom when first contemplating the idea. Technical imperatives aside (good examples including the light and acoustics of any domestic space, which are, ironically enough, not the most suitable to bring out the best in garments), combining personal and familial life with public and professional realms in the same space is not always a good idea. This is particularly true of events that present the finished work made by an artist or fashion designer that, in such contexts, are often accompanied by a build-up of preconceived considerations about the creative influence and process to an audience of friends, relatives, and complete strangers such as journalists and photographers. However, in the case of the event that unveiled Paula Raia’s Spring/Summer 2014/15 creations, the challenge was accepted, resolved and accomplished with undisputable aplomb at all levels to the benefit of the display of one of the best collections presented during the latest edition of São Paulo Fashion Week.

Designed by celebrated Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, Raia’s house is a rare peaceful and green oasis in the centre of a city of towering concrete blocks that house a metropolitan population currently exceeding 20 million people. After taking my seat to watch the show in a room with limestone floors and a wood-panelled central wall surrounded by wide glass sliding windows, I paused to observe the lush garden surrounding the house and the elements that, only after the show, I realised had undoubtedly influenced Paula Raia when developing her collection’s identity: a carefully manicured grass lawn framed a discreet swimming pool designed to look like a natural lake, and a couple of majestic wide and tall trees stood on grounds adjusted across generations around their longstanding existence, in a reverence to nature adroitly illustrated by Raia in her latest fashion range.

Finding inspiration in the universal idea of woman as a resilient tree (and in the indigenous mythological traits that it acquired within Brazilian folklore), Paula Raia resorted to natural fabrics and handicraft techniques to create a collection that is also an empowering celebration of womanhood and motherhood. Hers is a woman stoically and pragmatically grounded to life who, like a tree firmly rooted to the earth, steadfastly battles forces of nature to stand tall and strong for her children (the branches that reach upwards and outwards as physical and metaphorical extended manifestations of body and soul). If the description of woman as a living plant deeply connected to the soil and nature could have resulted in a condescending and commonplace social construction of women, under Raia’s command it managed to straddle the sensitive social line that divides Brazilian women with delicate consideration.

To a soundtrack of African tribal chants (some of which are at the root of Brazil’s folklore music owing to the slave trade during the country’s colonial foundation by the Portuguese in the 16th century), the models descended through a sculptural spiral staircase on the outside of the house and walked in and through two connected large rooms. The result was a parade of 22 looks presented in a gentle cadence through a gradient colour palette of earthy tones ranging from off-white and ecru to straw and ochre in textured natural fabrics such as raffia and straw, as well as in woven silk and cotton organza in some cases meticulously layered to create patterns such as fish scales. 

Elongated silhouettes were prevalent throughout the collection in the form of floor-length column skirts and dresses with sharp angular designs crafted around the shoulder lines. In a number of dresses, stacked layers of contrasting fabrics conjured the geometric designs that were made popular in the fashion and architecture of the 1930s as well as in the bulbous volumetries of Christian Dior’s garments of the late 1940s. Nevertheless, if Raia’s conic structures and pleated details revealed influences of the New Look, they also benefitted from Raia’s own reinterpretation by replacing Dior’s heavy wools with the lightness of cotton lace and of woven or plaited straw. And as the last model exited the house wearing a fitted top made of geometrically layered blocks of ecru and ochre fabrics over a long flowing skirt, and stood in formation with the other models in the garden facing the audience through the glass walls, the sense of communion with nature as the anchoring concept for the collection could not have been reinforced any further.

After the show ended and I began to formulate questions about the collection in my head in case I was able to have a few minutes alone with Paula Raia, I realised how, in spite of all the commotion that always ensues a runway show, the designer remained serenely happy. As I waited my turn to speak to her, I noticed that Raia kept holding her two children’s hands and paid attention to everything they said or did, even when her attention was requested by several people for the most diverse reasons. And when her mother congratulated her by giving her a long, silent embrace with tears running down her face, I quickly came to the conclusion that interviewing her would have been a redundant exercise. Against a hectic and noisy scene, that dignified and unstudied emotional portrait of generational ties and family love had provided all the answers to my questions about the origins of Paula Raia’s confidence, professional reliance, and the foundations for the personal and social awareness of womanhood and motherhood that she so consummately distilled into her sartorial creations.

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