Photo report – Sensing Spaces, Architecture Reimagined at the Royal Academy, London -

Currently showing at the Royal Academy is ‘Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined,’ a large scale exhibition created by seven contemporary architectural firms tasked with transforming the RA’s galleries – and also challenging visitors’ perceptions of space.

Dominating one room is this enormous wooden installation called the ‘Blue Pavilion.’

Described as ‘part playground, part monument’, the work was created by the Chilean-based architecture firm Pezo von Ellrichshausen and features four columns containing spiral staircases leading up to a viewing platform.

The viewing platforms afford a bird’s eye view of the gallery space below.

A wooden switchback walkway gradually takes visitors back to ground level.

The platform lets you get up close to the gold covered angels that decorate the neoclassical cornice.

West African architect Francis Kéré linked two galleries via a honeycomb plastic tunnel, with visitors encouraged to interact with the sculpture by adding coloured straws to the walls and roof.

Eduardo Souto de Moura created this simple but effective sculpture which took the form of a thin, dark concrete imprint of the gallery doors.

Accessed through a curtain. Li Xiaodong‘s installation invites visitors into a labyrinth of twig screens that eventually lead to an inner courtyard, via several dead ends.

Within the space can be found two small, differently scented rooms by Kengo Kumas.

Created by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Dublin architects Grafton, this large installation takes you from a bright room to a dark, oppressive one with the transition having an immediate impact on your senses.