Drawings by Florian Beigel and Philip Christou exhibited at Betts Project

Betts Project, the London-based commercial contemporary art gallery specialising in architecture, hosts an exhibition by London-based German and Canadian architects Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, whose practice Architecture Research Unit (ARU) has completed several buildings and large-scale masterplans in Korea, as well as the UK, and who taught for many years at the Cass and its ancestor schools of architecture.

The show comprises a series of new pencil line drawings made on greasy kitchen paper as well as drawings of the unbuilt ‘104 Village’ project for new settlements in Seoul. “We have made designs for the re-building of two neighbourhoods within a ‘shanty village’ on the slopes of a mountain on the edge of the city”, say Beigel and Christou. “These drawings were done about four years ago, and we are still waiting for the Seoul city government to decide to build the ‘104 Village’ project. In one of the neighbourhoods there is a small public ‘alleyway yard’ where 5 alleyways meet. Next to this little square will be another public place of about the same size, with a public laundry building. Several of the 104 Village drawings in this exhibition are studies for a small aedicule-like tower that we have designed to stand between the alleyway yard and the laundry yard. It will stand under a large chestnut tree, acting as a focal point of the neighbourhood. Laundry will be hung on washing lines attached to the tower”.

“These project related drawings embody the essential spatial character of this aspect of the project. Some of them were drawn before the design work had been done, and a few were drawn by looking at the timber design model when the design was more complete”.

“In contrast to this, we are showing a number of drawings that are not project related. They are more like one commonly thinks of as ‘still life’ drawings. We are drawing the space in a room between things, the irregular order of the elements of a wall, or the space on a table top between characters. The subjects that are drawn vary a lot, but the intention to see the space between things, a certain balance of relationships, is common in all the drawings”.

‘A Dream of Innocence’
16 February until 7 April 2018
Betts Project, London EC1V
Website: bettsproject.com