RA’s 2024 Summer Exhibition celebrates making and multidisciplinarity in architecture
At the Royal Academy’s 2024 Summer Exhibition, London collective Assemble brings together works from across the creative fields into the architectural rooms (18 June – 18 August 2024)

Of the whopping 1,710 works in the Royal Academy's 2024 Summer Exhibition, 211 of them are in just two galleries, curated by London-based collective Assemble. One feels like an industrial archive, the other evokes a creative studio. The Summer Exhibition always includes architecture, but this year, Assemble reaches beyond it to sample tools, processes, materiality and media from wallpaper to candles.
The RA’s 2024 Summer Exhibition and its architecture rooms
The RA’s theme for the whole show is 'Making Space', but as Assemble’s Kaye Song says, in Room VI, ’we flipped the theme and made it into Space Making’. Mirrors from last year’s show are also re-used, as Assemble co-founder Maria Lisogorskaya says, to ‘open the room up’. Despite its burgundy-painted walls, the use of steel shelving racks, pegboard screens and a stainless steel sheet repurposed as a plinth creates a workshop-like environment. Simultaneously, the space is an archive of architectural projects and curious objects.
The aggressive hydraulic claws in sculptor James Capper’s ‘Nipper Family’ make probably the most startling work in the gallery. Wall-mounted works include ‘Young Londoners’ London’, a grid of cast blocks mapping urban features by students of Open City’s Accelerate programme, next to ‘Cast Gallery’, a cabinet of exquisite models by architects Stanton Williams. Elsewhere, photographs cover subjects from working maker spaces and timber logging to the buildings of recently deceased high-tech architect Michael Hopkins.
Hassell displays a model of its ‘Habitat Radiation Protection Zone’ for a base near the Moon’s South Pole using 3D-printed ‘tetrapods’. Eric Parry counterpoints a model of his redesigned 290m-high One Undershaft skyscraper with human figures and a wooden truss element beside it.
Not everything has an architectural angle. A pottery work and montage of the Queen dancing with Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, is the subject of Elsie Owusu’s joyful Dancing Queen, while fellow architect Nigel Coates offers charming ‘Mini Chairs’ just centimetres high, in wire, plasticine, wax and bronze.
Different materials can be so attractive, it’s difficult to resist touching them – especially in the next room, the Central Hall. At the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, Assemble commanded a similarly eight-sided classical domed space but, with Granby Workshop, they just tiled the floor. At the RA, Lisogorskaya says, ‘the space needed something vertical’. It is transformed by long hanging banners by Jessie French, who used tinted non-petrochemical polymer, and Shanelle Ueyama, whose materials include Japanese kozo paper, dried hog gut, bamboo husks and more.
Below them, there’s another eclectic mix, including a trolley, bowls and terrines in fantastic stone and a bronze cast of Diplodocus vertebrae by Structure Warehouse. High on a wall is ‘Tufting Tests’, incorporating wool and cotton yarns, by Material Institute of New Orleans, with whom Assemble has long collaborated. The same colours in Anthony Whishaw’s enigmatic painting Sundown IV appear above it, in patches that Assemble daubed around the walls with left-over paint. Assemble members themselves contribute studio works, including an exquisite maquette for the façade of a workshop.
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Assemble has dissolved any silo mentality separating architecture from other disciplines, and its celebration of creative processes chimes with the trend to recognise and foster the craftsmanship and processes of making. Its two rooms are Summer Exhibition must-sees.
The Royal Academy of Art's Summer Exhibition runs from 18 June – 18 August 2024
-
Luxury yacht kitchens are nautical but nicer thanks to Officine Gullo
Yacht kitchens are often compact and utilitarian. Italian kitchen specialist Officine Gullo set out to reimagine them as spaces of conviviality and connection
-
Everything you need to know about changes to UK airport security rules for liquids and electronics
At select airports, new scanning technology means that liquids and electronics can stay in passengers’ bags as they go through security, and some airports are ditching the 100ml limit on liquids. Consult our simplified guide to understand the new rules
-
This Porsche surfboard collaboration captures the spirit of 1970s Southern California
The Porsche 911 Carrera RS 2.7 is the inspiration for the company’s second collaboration with California’s Almond Surfboards, featuring a custom-made board and limited-edition apparel and accessories
-
The inimitable Norman Foster: our guide to the visionary architect, shaping the future
Norman Foster has shaped today's London and global architecture like no other in his field; explore his work through our ultimate guide to this most impactful contemporary architect
-
Shard Place offers residents the chance to live in the shadow of London’s tallest building
The 27-storey tower from Renzo Piano Building Workshop joins The Shard and The News Building to complete Shard Quarter, providing a sophisticated setting for renters
-
Kengo Kuma’s ‘Paper Clouds’ in London is a ‘poem’ celebrating washi paper in construction
‘Paper Clouds’, an installation by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is a poetic design that furthers research into the use of washi paper in construction
-
Foster + Partners to design the national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II
For the Queen Elizabeth II memorial, Foster + Partners designs proposal includes a new bridge, gates, gardens and figurative sculptures in St James’ Park
-
Wolves Lane Centre brings greenery, growing and grass roots together
Wolves Lane Centre, a new, green community hub in north London by Material Cultures and Studio Gil, brings to the fore natural materials and a spirit of togetherness
-
A new London exhibition explores the legacy of Centre Pompidou architect Richard Rogers
‘Richard Rogers: Talking Buildings’ – opening tomorrow at Sir John Soane’s Museum – examines Rogers’ high-tech icons, which proposed a democratic future for architecture
-
At the Royal Academy summer show, architecture and art combine as never before
The Royal Academy summer show is about to open in London; we toured the iconic annual exhibition and spoke to its curator for architecture, Farshid Moussavi
-
This ingenious London office expansion was built in an on-site workshop
New Wave London and Thomas-McBrien Architects make a splash with this glulam extension built in the very studio it sought to transform. Here's how they did it