Surfacing Stories

The V&A+RIBA Architecture Gallery opened in 2004. Its narrative foregrounded stories of style, architectural design, building types and materials. Since then, political and cultural shifts have prompted the desire to explore issues of provenance, exploitation of people and planet, inclusion, and diversity of race, gender and sexuality.

For the London Festival of Architecture 2023, the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership has invited twelve activists, architects, historians and writers to be critical friends of the Architecture Gallery. In this intervention they offer fresh interpretations of objects on display, surfacing stories about provenance, eurocentrism, women, disability, LGBTQ+, colonialism and climate change.

This project was supported by the RIBA and funded thanks to the generosity of Donald and Nancy Notley. The project was also supported by the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Fund, Oxford Brookes University.