OFFICE 168

Over the years several technical interventions have altered the brutalist interior of the Barbican Art Gallery in London. The scenography for Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age addresses this altered condition, consciously integrating these spatial inconsistencies. The gallery – a double-height hall with a wrap-around mezzanine and a series of alcoves repeated on both levels – was organised chronologically for the exhibition, with works spread out over existing alcoves. A set of interconnected geometrical rooms, painted light grey on the inside and dark grey on the outside, were added to fill the central hall. While four of these volumes were autonomous, designed to accommodate particular works, the rest were completed by extending the existing walls. The intervention displayed precise fragments of the building – the coffered ceiling, an exposed concrete column, black railings – constructing a fiction of a pristine interior with abstract objects.