RIBA HQ Bird's Eye View

Terraces, RIBA Headquarters

with Millimetre (2008/9)

Studio Weave, with Millimetre were shortlisted for the redevelopment of the terraces at the Royal Institute of British Architects Headquarters at Portland Place, London.

With our proposal, we wanted to capture and express the idea of the building being privy to a lot of important information. We wanted visitors to the RIBA to enjoy a sense that they’re being let in on some of these secrets.

Throughout it’s lifetime, the RIBA headquarters has been a unique witness to a rich design history. The building houses an extensive architectural library and archive in testament to this.

Archives and libraries are brimming with a sense of magic. Rational rooms are lined with perfectly tailored secrets. The repetitive, neat organisation belying millions of fantastic realms, parallel universes carefully folded and squeezed together. All these autonomous worlds hide all day, waiting discretely behind closed drawers but the space buzzes with the idea that at night, when everyone has left, everything comes out into the moonlight.

The terraces are used by both architects and non-architects while visiting the library, cafe, conference facilities, and most of all when attending events from exhibition openings to weddings. We were enchanted by the idea that these visitors are coming upon an archive at night.

Our proposal was to play on the image of the building as a cabinet, the three terraces like three open drawers. The walls and balustrades are the drawers; the floors are decorative drawer liners; and the furniture the archived content, out to play.

RIBA HQ imagined as a cabinet