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multi-disciplinarity and collaboration. Te aforementioned works also chime with the prevailing focus on where materials are sourced from and how to minimise impact. Te RIBA building uses African marble on its processional staircase, a silvery wood from India on its hall floors, and Canadian maple and Australian walnut on its panelled walls. Te third work is from Indian-born artist and designer Arinjoy Sen: a rainbow-bright alternative to the Jarvis Mural that places the indigenous subjects of the original centre stage in a carnival of hope.


It feels right that the RIBA is making


visible some of the narratives that for so long have been ignored or subsumed beneath what now seems a very 20th-century imperative to celebrate architects as creative geniuses reshaping our world, never mind the impact that this has on the earth and its multitude of occupants. Now with its youngest and first black president, Nigerian-born Muyiwa Oki, at the helm, it is necessary to


show that these changes go deeper than surface decoration and prominent personnel. And change is what we will see in the


new building, I’m told. Te four-year, £85m refurbishment is set to ‘widen access to architecture’, on all fronts. Its world-class, four million-item architectural collection, currently dispersed across five UK settings (including the V&A), will be united, catalogued and conserved, the better to be deployed across two spaces: the existing Architecture Gallery along with a new, museum-standard exhibition space. Tese and other archive and library assets will be shared with a wider audience on improved digital platforms, accessible by the RIBA’s thousands of international members, as well as the general public. Te building will have its ageing and incompetent heating upgraded, thermal efficiency improved and all 28 levels will be accessible by a new, larger lift. A fully accessible entrance on Weymouth Street will usher visitors into a ‘destination cafe’ full of


models and drawings that, along with the relocated shop, will make all visitors feel welcome, not just RIBA members. RIBA president Oki says: ‘We want RIBA


to be at the heart of a global architecture community where important ideas – including how we design a low-carbon future – are developed and shared.’


Tat inclusivity is also apparent in the fourth work in this small, sparely designed but punchy exhibition: a film by artist Esi Eshun, in which she tours the building, staring up at its façade, standing in its column-flanked doorway, looking at the colonial structures, infrastructure and aesthetics behind them. She calls the Dominion Screen ‘a cartography of desire and despair’. Opening in the week that Lesley Lokko received the RIBA gold medal – the first black woman to be awarded this prize – the exhibition and the ensuing reorganisation set a hopeful tone for this 190-year-old institution, and the building itself which celebrates its 90th birthday this year.


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