Studio 09

Studio brief

Unprecedented numbers of contemporary art collectors are building private museums to share their collections and promote emerging artists around the world. Ever since the collector Charles Saatchi opened his first exhibition space in a former paint factory at Boundary Road in St John’s Wood, London has been at the forefront of this trend. 

Studio 09 will start the year with a collective study of these spaces, the works they hold and their relationship to the city. Our first proposition on a site in central London will be a house for a collector. We will explore private spaces of living and rooms for public display and exhibition.

For the field trip we will travel to Venice and study the Casa da Stazio, the generic typology of the Venetian house, its relationship to the city and how it has evolved over time into the Palazzo we know today. We will look at a number of institutions situated within, including the Prada Foundation, the Peggy Guggenheim museum, the Pinault Collection and Querini Stampalia Foundation by Carlo Scarpa.

We will also use the opportunity to explore the sixteenth International Architecture Biennale  Freespace curated by Yvonne Farrell  and  Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects. We will look at ways of exhibiting and the forms of representation used in contemporary architectural practice. 

On our return to London, the main project will be to develop a programme for the Foundation itself, a space for collection, gathering, education and display and to create a building proposition that responds to its context and forms part of the urban fabric of London.  

We will focus on the act of making as a way of exploring the architectural proposition and as a means of representation. Working between the scales of the city and the room using model making, photography and drawing to develop our understanding of the role of building within the city.

Image: Palazzo Giustiniani and Ca’ Foscari, Grand Canal Venice, David Howarth