The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced a new digital collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, the leading online platform that uses technology to share the unique collections and cultural institutions with a global audience.
RIBA has one of the largest, oldest and most significant architectural collections in the world and is the first UK organisation dedicated to architecture to partner with Google Arts & Culture.
A specially curated selection of 15 online stories has been published and free to view on the Google Arts & Culture platform. They range from the creation of Central Park in New York, modernist buildings in Ghana to the Picturesque movement and from a century of Olympic buildings to a historic tour of key architectural landmarks in Venice.
Featured highlights from the RIBA’s collections will include original drawings by Ernö Goldfinger, Sir Charles Barry (Big Ben), Étienne-Louis Boullée and Toyo Ito. Featured projects include work by Walter Gropius, Pier Luigi Nervi, Kenzo Tange, Jane Drew & Maxwell Fry, Zaha Hadid and Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Early photography of New York and Venice (Carlo Ponti, Carlo Naya and Alinari Fratelli) from the 1860s onwards. A photo of the Louvre in Paris under construction in 1846 can be viewed up close, revealing extraordinary levels of detail.
The curated selection illustrates the international scope of RIBA’s Collection, spanning the Renaissance to the present day. It includes some never-before-exhibited objects that showcase more unusual parts of the archive, such as landscape designer Sir Humphrey Repton’s drawings and business card, private photographs from architects, portraits, parks and garden designs.
RIBA CEO Alan Vallance: “Our new partnership with Google Arts & Culture creates a great opportunity to inspire and delight a global audience and to showcase our unique treasures. We look forward to curating more online experiences and exhibitions, to illustrate the impact and importance of design and architecture, throughout the ages and around the world.”
Amit Sood, Director, Google Arts & Culture: “This is the first step in what we hope will be an inspiring architectural journey with RIBA on Google Arts & Culture. Through our collaboration, we are proud to help share their incredible stories and resources with architecture lovers and aspiring students around the world. RIBA has one of the world’s leading architecture collections and inspires and supports global architectural talent as we look to designing the future.”
Link to RIBA Google Arts & Culture hub: https://artsandculture.google.com/project/riba
