Congregation - Architecture Foundation Exhibition : St Mary Magdoline Church, London
February 2020
A commission for the design and fabrication of the Architecture Foundation’s Congregation exhibition showcasing recent religious building projects. First installed in the crypt space of St Mary Mandolin Church, the travelling show presents models, drawings and images of buildings by 26 UK practices.
The exhibition ran for only several weeks on it’s first outing and therefore needed to be correspondingly expedient but also sufficiently flexible to suit future configurations in as yet unknown venues.
We created a family of 3 different sized plinths at 3 different heights, which could be placed alongside one another with the top surfaces overlapping to form defined groups for each of the 5 themes within the exhibition’s curation. Arranged in a chain like loop around the central columns of the crypt space, the layout is a nod towards the exhibition title ‘Congregation’ and reflects the exhibition’s graphic identity by Studio Christopher Victor.
Attempting to make the exhibition furniture as lean is possible (for economy, efficient storage and sustainability reasons), the plinths are made with a pair of slotted of 12mm MDF panels wrapped with a sheet of 2mm MDF held by a single cam strap. The plinth top is made from oiled 9mm MDF panels with radiused ends and bluenosed edges. A routed cross on the underside of the plinth tops allows them to fit securely onto the slotted core panels producing an incredibly stable and strong plinth given the thinness of the materials used.
