David Adjaye
Length x Width x Height
15 September – 24 October 2004
iniva - institute of international visual arts
Rivington Place, off Rivington Street
London EC2
Wednesday – Sunday / 12 noon – 6pm
free admission / wheelchair access
+ 44 (0)20 7729 9616
www.iniva.org
A new installation on the site of the future home of inIVA and Autograph ABP
Length x Width x Height is a major new site-specific installation by one of Britain’s leading young architects, David Adjaye.
Length x Width x Height physically maps the site of the future home of the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) and Autograph ABP at Rivington Place in Shoreditch, east London. LxWxH is unique in that it demarcates a site of major architectural significance. The new home for inIVA and Autograph ABP will be a landmark building for culturally-diverse visual arts, as well as London’s first new publicly-funded visual arts space to be built in forty years.
LxWxH invites visitors on a journey through space, light and sound to explore and experience the most basic elements of architecture. Building on previous collaborative projects with artists Chris Ofili and Faisal Abdu’Allah, LxWxH asks the visitor to engage with architecture on a physical and emotional level.
LxWxH incorporates an audio component that is built into the installation. People who live and work locally were interviewed about their journeys, the spaces they occupy and the area they live in. These recorded narratives are interwoven into a surround-sound audio environment, mixed by musician, DJ and writer Charlie Dark.
Length x Width x Height encourages visitors and the local community to reflect upon the nature and processes of construction, the vision the new building offers for the future and the memories of the area’s occupants. The site itself has a rich history of immigration and settling, from the Huguenots in the Seventeenth Century to today’s Bengali, Bangladeshi and Somalian communities.
Adjaye uses his materials playfully, working with light and space as well as reclaimed waste materials from the building industry that are usually left hidden from the public gaze. Length x Width x Height broadens the tangible, physical elements of construction and explores architecture’s spiritual and emotional aspects, encouraging visitors to embark on a journey of their own.
Length x Width x Height is commissioned by inIVA and supported by Arts Council England and Romag.
For further press information, images or interview requests please contact:
Stuart Croft / Natasha Anderson at press@iniva.org or on + 44 (0)20 7729 9616
