The annual Wallpaper* Architects Directory, now in its twelfth year, provides the ultimate little black book to the world’s most promising young practices. For this year’s Directory, Wallpaper* selected twenty studios from around the world. Each was given an open brief to design the ultimate rural retreat. These twenty houses were designed to be flexible and functional, but also formally and technically innovative, sitting on an isolated countryside site. The only sanction was the need for the homes to touch the ground lightly, with minimum disruption to the landscape.
This exhibition, in The Architecture Foundation’s Project Space, unites the featured architects, showcasing all twenty bespoke homes in a single show; a swirling, imaginary topography, designed by emerging UK-based practice Naja de Ostos, who conceived the installation as a blossoming abstracted landscape. Selected highlights of the Wallpaper* Architects Directory and the full list of twenty practices will be revealed in the magazine’s July 2011 issue, and featured in full on wallpaper.com from the exhibition’s opening day.
As part of the exhibition programme, Wallpaper* and The Architecture Foundation have invited a selection of the practices from the 2011 Directory to take part in a series of talks, using the theme of built/unbuilt to explore the relationship between real world commissions and the ideas and approaches that arose out of the open brief for the Directory commission.
The exhibition will run from June 9 to July 14. The talk dates are June 14 and July 5. For more information, including ticket, please click here.