The Royal Institute of British Architects has been taking stock of the disturbingly imperial decoration of its palatial home – with a new show telling a larger, more unsettling story
Part Egyptian tomb, part masonic temple, the 1930s headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects has always exuded a cultish air. Sited on London’s illustrious Portland Place, among embassies, consulates and oligarchs’ pieds-à-terre, it is a fittingly regal headquarters for a chartered profession that has long styled itself as an exclusive gentlemen’s club.
If you have ever been to an event there, you probably won’t have paid much attention to the dull brown mural at the back of the auditorium. It’s a dirty, poorly lit and badly scuffed screen, which tends to fade into the background of the surrounding art deco pomp. And there’s a good reason that the RIBA hasn’t wanted to you look at it too closely.
“It’s one of the most racist things I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Thandi Loewenson, a Zimbabwe-born architectural designer and researcher. “And that’s saying something.”
Take a look, and you’ll see groups of semi-naked figures from all corners of the British empire, cartoonishly depicted as primitive savages with exaggerated features, huddled in timid submission around the edges of the mural. In the centre, radiating above a map of Britain like some heavenly vision, is the RIBA council, depicted as a professional parliament of identical faceless figures. Floating between the professionals and the natives, in a kind of architectural halo, are the symbolic buildings of empire: the government buildings of Pretoria, the viceroy’s palace in New Delhi, the old parliament house of Canberra, and other works authored by the institute’s distinguished members.
