‘Indian Summer And Thereafter’

Betts Project stages a show of drawings by architect Peter Wilson

Betts Project, the London gallery specialising in architectural drawings, is staging an exhibition of works made by Peter Wilson, co-founder of Münster-based Bolles+Wilson and architect of the Luxor Theatre, Rotterdam, and Luxembourg’s national library among other notable buildings.

‘Indian Summer and Thereafter’ (27 June — 25 July 2020) presents over 80 works made since 1983, when Melbourne-born Wilson was living in London and teaching at the Architectural Association. The show’s title derives from the observation that in the 1970s and 80s, the AA – then populated by such figures as Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and Bernard Tschumi – experienced an “Indian Summer of hand drawing”.

”We did not know at the time that a digital eclipse was around the corner”, says Wilson. “Now, some years later, some of us pencil-holding dinosaurs are being visited by scholars of ancient technologies”.

Top: Pont des Arts, Elevation and Plan, 1983
Above: Rotterdam Kop van Zuid, Up-Isometric with Luxor Theatre, 1994; Futurist Coastline – Liguria, 2016; To Invent a Marina in Fiuminchino, 2016

The exhibition includes the Wilhaminer Pier project in Rotterdam (1994), which was the last hand-drawn presentation by Bolles+Wilson, and which collapses three proposals: the Bridgewatcher’s House and Quay, the Landing Square and the Luxor Theatre. Also on display are two projects from the 1984 Bridgebuilding series – The Academia Bridge for Venice and the Paris Pont des Arts.

The most recent works on display include 44 objects from Wilson’s series ‘Small World Theory’ (2008-2019). These works focus less on the architecture of Bolles+Wilson and more on Wilson’s private reveries – objects or by-products accidentally brought into being by the hand of the architect.

‘Indian Summer And Thereafter’
Betts Project, London EC1V
27 June – 25 July 2020
Details: bettsproject.com