Alternative Histories (Joseph Paxton)

Acknowledging that architecture is a corpus of inherited ideas, Alternative Histories invited more than 80 contemporary practices in the UK and Europe to imagine an exchange with architects from the past. Each office was assigned a different drawing from the collection of Drawing Matter - from the frontispiece of Abbé Laugier's 1753 Essai sur l'architecture, to Erik Gunnar Asplund's 1917 plan for the Villa Snellman, to the 1970 studies for a theatre by Carlo Scarpa. The architects were then tasked with making a model that not only responded to what they saw, but also envisioned an alternative future for the original drawing while adhering to the constraints of the project: although comprising different materials and scales, the models had to be transportable, and their footprints had to fit within the surface area of the historic drawings. A large white van then crisscrossed the UK and the Continent to collect these enigmatic objects to be exhibited in London. Seen together, the models reveal a spectrum of interpretations of historical reference, insights into design methodology and the intertwined processes of thinking and representation. At once an exhibition of new architecture in Europe and an enquiry into how it is now being made, Alternative Histories presents a shared past and present, both kaleidoscopic and undefinable, where there is always room for more and different points of reference, and expansion.