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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is celebrating engineering design in a special sea-son, which runs until 6 November.
The season features a series of displays, installations and events dedicated to engineering de-sign, including a newly-commissioned site-specific garden installation, Elytra Filament Pavilion (pictured). Visitors will be able to watch the pavilion being built, as new components are fabricated on-site by a Kuka robot, during a series of special events as part of the season.
The headline exhibition for the season is Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design, which celebrates the life and legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest engineers. Arup’s pioneering philosophy of Total Design, which for him meant to “join all the professions right from the start”, redefined the way architects, designers and engineers work together.
The exhibition reveals the untold stories behind some of the world’s most recognisable buildings and projects such as the Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre in Paris and Crossrail. There are more than 150 previously unseen prototypes, models, archival materials, drawings, films and photographs, as well as new digital displays featuring animations and augmented reality to showcase almost 100 years of creativity, engineering and architectural design.
The exhibition begins with Arup’s early career and explores the profound effect his move to London in 1923 had in shaping his understanding of modern engineering practice. The story continues with his encounters with leading architectural theorists such as the Bauhaus founder, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier, as well as his collaborative projects with experimental architectural practice Tecton Group.
Technical studies and models for early projects such as the 1934 Penguin Pool at London Zoo are on display. There are also memorabilia from Arup’s personal drawings collection, including his doodles and sketches that often accompanied poems and notes.
Arup’s contribution to the war effort is shown through his designs for improving air-raid shelters and crucial work on the Mulberry temporary harbours deployed during the D-Day landings in France in 1944.
The exhibition features his firm’s collaborations with emerging architects that pioneered new approaches to construction which are still in use. These include Arup’s collaboration with Foster and Partners on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank HQ, which used unprecedented elements of prefabrication, and the Kansai International Airport terminal.
The final section of the exhibition examines Arup’s legacy and highlights recent projects by his company. Major projects such as Crossrail are brought to life via interactive maps. Arup’s new technologies for acoustics and environmental sound studies are showcased, including a recreation of an Arup SoundLab presenting case studies for concert halls and the HS2 railway route.
The exhibition also looks at Arup’s solutions for open-source housing, including the firm’s collaborations with Architecture 00 on WikiHouse, as well as crowd flow analysis projects undertaken for cultural attractions around the world, including the V&A itself.
For more details, see: www.vam.ac.uk
Five things to see
1. Mind over matter – contemporary British engineering: Models, drawings and digital renderings from projects across the globe reveal how British firms are leading the way in engineering.
2. The Sydney Opera House: On show is the original Ferranti Pegasus computer used by Arup engineers that is said to have saved 10 years of manual calculations, as well as drawings and models.
3. The Pompidou Centre: The exhibition explores the Arup team’s contribution to the design of the building’s most distinctive feature – its external structure and exposed services.
4. The future: Learn more about the pioneering work undertaken by Arup worldwide today, including major infrastructure projects and innovative technologies.
5. Elytra Filament Pavilion: The newly-commissioned site-specific garden installation was built by a robot and can track the weather and footfall via a network of embedded sensors.