Design Studio 13 Master of Architecture (MArch RIBA Part 2)
Andrei Martin & Andrew Yau
Andrei Martin is a partner at PLP Architecture and co-founder of PLP Labs.
Andrew Yau is a design director at Urban Future Organisation, an international practice and design research collaborative.
DS13: The Museum as an Agent of Cultural Diplomacy
Yr1: Thaslima Begum, Adalgisa de Fatima Nangumbe Cassuende, Meryem Geldiyeva, Ella Tsz Ying Hui, Marina Zoe Ioannou, Christos Karamanos, Arianne Rebecca Lazarus-Noel, Aylar Mammedova, Mansi Hardattbhai Mehta, Ben Bernard Smith, Yousra Tiar
Yr2: Irina Coraga, Camilla Martellino, Leonardo Pelli, Andreea-Laura Petrescu, Elis Stephen Reah, Benjamin Philip Chee Chuan Wong
The British Museum, one of the world’s most respected institutions, spans millennia of human creativity, beliefs and passions. The galleries in its Western Range capture stories from Ancient Greek, Roman, Near East and Egyptian worlds, covering the Mediterranean and beyond, and embracing narratives that evolved continuously through the ages. Its collections reflect various roles – from war and communication to commercial exchange and cultural significance. Once meaningful in their original contexts, these artefacts became part of a Western cultural project in the 19th century, forming the foundations of art history and a contemporary sense of Western patrimony. Today, these narratives are debated, seen as either aspirational or problematic in their appropriation.
This year, through this lens of the Western Range, DS13 has attempted to reconceptualise the Museum, moving beyond its didactic role to engage a more diverse audience and offer a more nuanced interpretation of the histories it presents.
In the nineteenth-century museum, Classical orders informed the architectural language, serving as the backdrop to key narratives. Exemplified by the British Museum, its interiors extended this architectural vocabulary, creating a cohesive and ‘absolute’ enclosure. In contrast, the twentieth-century museum embraced modern abstraction, prioritising content over architecture through a rhetoric of neutrality. While no less ideological, it maintained a reciprocity between art and context.
These models evolved by the 21st century. Curatorial practices are now recognised as prompts for critical ideas, challenging preconceived notions and building new connections between past and present. This shift emphasises ‘flexibility’ in architecture, allowing curators to collaborate with designers in creating meaningful narrative spaces. he architecture now adapts to the curator’s vision, accommodating diverse backdrops for each collection.
In reimagining the museum typology for our present condition, we have emphasised the physicality of object installation, making it a central element of design. Materials, fabrication methods and spatial character worked to contextualise content in a more instrumental way.
The British Museum’s diverse collections, numerous departments and complex political processes demand flexible thinking. We aimed to channel this flexibility in curatorial approaches to create a cohesive whole, one that was greater than its individual parts. We sought to facilitate a productive dialogue between its various constituencies, curatorial strategies and organisational complexities, ultimately strengthening the museum’s internal culture and community.
Special thanks: Prof. Huong Le (Vietnamese German University), Wan Feng (Gensler), Clive Fenwick (Studio Iris), Elliot Hill (Lawson Ward Studio), Marianna Kyriakides (Assael Architecture), Tuan Anh Tran (Twelve Architects), Jason Antony Sams (DSDHA), Nick Strachan (Leslie Jones), Callum Stubbing (Plan A), Alejandro Vicente Soto (AHMM), Dagmar Zvonikova (Novavita Design)
Archive of DS13’s work from previous years:
