The RIBA lost the struggle with the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in 1978. This removed the architects' ability to rely on a mandatory scale of fees and present a relatively unified profession controlling status and pricing. Prior to 1978 competition between architects had been further limited because RIBA members were not supposed to boldly advertise.

Architecture moved from a level playing field to a market led profession competing on price and promotion.

A further blow to UK architects came in 1984 when HRH Prince Charles delivered a withering speech at the Gala Dinner celebrating 150 years of the RIBA. His vocal disdain for modern architecture turned a celebratory professional event at Hampton Court Palace into a high-profile rebuke of the architectural establishment.

It was powerful rhetoric that added to a wider loss to architects of public patronage. Consider this context and it makes what happened at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1986 even more extraordinary.

Each architect curated their own presentation and designed their own installations. It was the same year the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank was opened.

Instead of evaluating historical architecture this exhibition focused on three contemporary living architects. It gave the architects centre stage with an exhibition in the principle galleries this was not a side show or an modest appearance in the Summer Exhibition.

There was a long shallow tank representing the Thames in the Rogers exhibit.
On the opening night James Stirling surreptitiously dropped in some goldfish - not realising they would not survive the recirculating pump. The Lloyds Building was to be opened by the Queen later the same year.

New Directions in British Architecture; Foster, Rogers and Stirling treated the architects not as technical achievers but as creative figures in their own right. The Royal Academy used its prestige to give a high profile platform to contemporary architecture. This is something we have not seen on such a scale in the forty years since.

Stirling had elements the Staastgallerie constructed by members of the Stuttgart team who worked on the actual building.

Musings from my life in photography and architecture ©Lynne Bryant
All photographs ©Richard Bryant. They may not be downloaded, scraped or copied in anyway without prior permission from the photographer and negotiation of a licence.