Exhibition: Childhood ReCollections

Daniel Libeskind with accordion in Lodz, Poland, 1955

Zaha Hadid, Kengo Kuma, Daniel Libeskind, Nieto Sobejano, Denise Scott Brown and Philip Treacy reveal the childhood recollections that have shaped their outstanding visions and work.

Kengo Kuma with his father on the veranda of their traditional 1930s house in the suburbs of Tokyo, c.1959, photo courtesy Kengo Kuma

Denise Scott Brown in Las Vegas, 1966, courtesy Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi in South Africa

Architects and designers are often asked whose work inspired them as students and influenced their thinking, but Roca London Gallery’s autumn show suggests that design inspiration actually goes back much further than this, into early childhood, and can take some unexpected forms. Writer and curator Clare Farrow has interviewed six leading architects and designers about their recollections of childhood perceptions, experiences and sensations, as a key to understanding what for them has now become intuitive in their practice. Inspired by Chanel’s words – ‘Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions’ – the theme of the show extends beyond architecture and furniture design into the world of fashion, in the inspirational form of milliner Philip Treacy, whose childhood memories also encompass light, colour, nature, scent, materials, structure, and above all, a heightened sensitivity to the world.

Walter Gropius and the Office Tower of the University of Baghdad, 1967, Harvard Art Museums/Busch Reisinger Museum, Gift of Ise Gropius, BRGA.124.7, courtesy Harvard Art Museums

Unidentified Artist, University of Baghdad, c. 1957, Harvard Art Museums/Busch Reisinger Museum, Gift of Ise Gropius, BRGA.124.12, courtesy Harvard Art Museums

Conceived as modern-day, multi-sensory, interactive cabinets of curiosities – as reflected in the exhibition design by architecture and design studio Mentsen – the designers’ memories are re-collected through photographs, text, objects, materials, scent, film, music and sketches, in the context of their contemporary designs.