Fields in a Niche
Exhibitions
Fields in a Niche is a series of small-scale research exhibitions developed as a collaboration between the German Historical Institute London (GHIL) and the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art (RCA). Presenting ongoing research from the RCA’s Architecture PhD Programme, the project brings together architects, artists, filmmakers, designers and historians to create a shared space for experimentation, exchange and public discussion.
Taking its title from the architectural niche as much as from the idea of “niche research,” Fields in a Niche explores how highly specific questions and fragments can open into much larger fields of inquiry. Each exhibition begins from something particular: an object, a document, an image, material, book or encounter. This chosen niche element becomes an aperture onto a wider intellectual, historical or spatial field.
Presented as a succession of exhibitions lasting between two and four weeks, the series develops a spatial and methodological vocabulary across the different spaces of the GHI. The architectural niche foregrounds the tangible, concentrating attention on an object, fragment or material trace. The library opens onto an intellectual field through a book that has informed, challenged or redirected the research, drawing attention to reading, annotation and interpretation as research practices. In the reception area, large-scale images explore questions of looking and scale, moving between close-up and wider views, detail and context, fragment and territory. Further works may be situated strategically throughout the building, responding to its architecture, everyday uses or particular spatial conditions. The building itself becomes part of the research apparatus and a mnemonic space, recalling the art of memory in which objects and images are placed within architectural interiors to establish connections across histories, materials and ideas.
The selected book provides a further connection between the temporary exhibition and the longer institutional life of the GHI. Closely read, annotated or conceptually unpacked through each project, the books will remain after the exhibition has ended: a physical copy enters the GHI library and is recorded in its catalogue. As the installations appear and disappear, Field in a Niche thus leaves behind a growing bibliography, a cumulative collection tracing the different fields of inquiry that have temporarily occupied the building.
Accompanied by conversations and public events, Field in a Niche understands exhibition-making as a form of research in itself: a means of testing ideas, making connections and bringing different disciplinary perspectives into dialogue.
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Contact
Prof Dr Ines Weizman
Professor of History and Theory of Architecture
Head of PhD Programme
School of Architecture
Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore, London
SW7 2EU
ines.weizman@rca.ac.uk
School of Architecture, Royal College of Art
Postgraduate Research (PGR) Programme