A table – Opening

For this year’s end-of-year show, Studio Space Popular has set a table for the departments of the Institute of Architecture (I oA). Tables are at the centre of many activities of our lives. The table, in a way, epitomises social life, as it brings us together to keep us apart. As architects, we often design rooms around them and spend countless hours sitting at them, alone and with others. The I oA’s Square is organized around a system of pin-up boards on rails, a flexible infrastructure for displaying work and re-configuring the room according to different needs. For the duration of the Angewandte Festival, we have taken these boards down from their rails and rearranged them as a table. Nothing new has been brought in except joints: carpenter clamps which, against the white boards, become the one ornamental feature in the room. The exhibition adds an extra axis through its content-support format: alongside other materials specific to each department, content has been compiled into books and displays. We are interested in what it means to display work around a common surface rather than across separate walls. The table does not dissolve differences—each department brings their own concerns and frameworks—but it creates proximity across a shared surface.