XR Installation Alison’s Room Continues European TourXR Installation Alison’s Room Continues European Tour

Alison’s Room explores the possibilities of virtual reality for archival and design research. Paula Strunden recreated the original study of British architect Alison Smithson to experiment with new narratives that combine an immersive experience with historical design analysis. Visitors move through the storylines and explore the multi-sensory nature of memory with the help of special tools, buttons – and a talking cat.

Following last year’s appearances at the Architecture Film Festival in Rotterdam and the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht, the installation can be seen in Linz this autumn during the Ars Electronica Festival (4-8 September), as part of the exhibition Applied Virtualities: Extended Reality in Practice, in the context of the Realities in Transition project.

The installation will then feature in the Concrete Dreams programme Concrete Dreams, at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle from 19 September to 20 December. The Farrell Centre is located on the campus of Newcastle University, where Alison and Peter Smithson studied in the 1940s. They went on to become key figures in post-war British architecture.

The Smithsons were early proponents of Brutalism in architecture and co-founders of the avant-garde group Team 10. Alison was also the author of a number of important publications on Team 10. The Smithson archives of Team 10 are held in the collection of the Nieuwe Instituut.

Alison’s Room is a project by Paula Strunden, realised as part of the EU-funded project TACK: Communities of Tacit Knowledge in Architecture, in collaboration with Dirk van den Heuvel and the Jaap Bakema Study Centre.

The installation was developed and premiered at the Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam in November 2022 as one of the prototypes for a Virtual CIAM Museum, a joint archive-based project by the Nieuwe Instituut, the Jaap Bakema Study Centre and TU Delft, initiated by Dirk van den Heuvel.