The Architecture Drawing Prize Virtual Retrospective

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This month sees the opening of The Architecture Drawing Prize exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum in London. It features drawings by the finalists and category winners of the 2021 Architecture Drawing Prize. The overall winner of the Prize will be announced 25/01/22. At the same time, Sir John Soane's Museum is launching a virtual retrospective exhibition of the five previous years of the price. 

The Retrospective showcases drawings by the winners and finalists of The Architecture Drawing Prize since its inception in 2017. It exemplifies how virtual space is able to facilitate the mounting of large exhibitions that can work as a strong complement to more focussed and smaller physical exhibitions.

Greg Willis from Make Architects who led on the design of the virtual gallery and collaborated closely with Curator Louise Stewart on Sir John Soane’s Museum retrospective exhibition design says,

“The Vault of Contemporary Art uses our placemaking skills to create a digital platform that plays with materiality, light, sound and sense of place in an innovative and distinctive way giving great care to how objects are displayed. The idea has been to improve our experience of digital space, making it more memorable and distinct.

Curator of Exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, Louise Stewart, has organised the Retrospective around ten themes ranging from "Light, Space, Shade, to "This Crowded City" to "Dystopian Visions" of which says,

"In this group of drawings, artists grapple with future threats. In doing so, they take account of issues such as climate change, overpopulation, and energy provision. Their unsettling imagery demonstrates architecture’s impact on people and planet, and its potential to underpin, exacerbate and solve the problems faced by society.”