Minutes away from foreign embassies and Great Portland Street, countless celebrations are held in the prestigious confines of the first floor Henry Florence Hall in the RIBA’s headquarters building, 66 Portland Place.[1] [2] Many esteemed RIBA members and well-meaning young students have danced away on the timber floor of the space since the building’s completion in 1934.[3] Yet, I wonder how many of us saw the embedded racism within the institution’s walls and its own ideals?

Even for us architect-trained people of colour, it’s easy to miss the volume of Empire timber and colonial imagery amongst the pageantry of the building’s art deco features.[4] Certainly it is not well known by the wider public. Information regarding the prevalent and intentional calls to 1930’s Empire strength is captured by contemporary RIBA issued display boards in the building as well as on their website.[5] [6] But is this enough?[7] [8]

A key example is The ‘Dominion Screen’, an Empire Timber sculpted relief screen in the Henry Florence Hall. It is set into a grid of squares, five by four. Horizontally, the countries of Australia, South Africa, India, Canada, and New Zealand. Vertically, an axis organised by national animal, resource, subject, and flora. It features haunting colonial caricatures of people of colour: an unclothed black woman kneeling with a child, an Indian woman sitting alongside an overflowing basket of fruits and a brutishly large First Nation figure swamping through the snow.

Congruent to what decolonial theorists have articulated on racialised power relations, the ‘Dominion Screen’ shows racialized subjects as meek, genderless and child-like, synonymous with the virgin properties of a nature untamed.[9] [10] [11]

Mother Nature, Mineral and Melanin are all flattened into a matrix of things to be extracted, managed, and manipulated by the British-capitalist-imperial machine.

Despite the momentous individual successes of POC leaders such as RIBA president-elect Muyiwa Oki and CEO Dr Valerie Vaughan-Dick, the monarchical world of the Great British Architectural Ideology is too colossal to be solved by them alone.[12] These leaders offer hope that institutions inch closer to the complex, diverse and beautiful communities many of us already live in. However, we must stay vigilant so these values are not simply absorbed into this pre-existing colonial matrix that sees us as a resource.  How do we Bend Out of Shape a historical destiny that sees our successes as the ‘developed fruits’ of an imperial machine?

Like the ‘Dominion Screen’, I believe it’s less about individual elements, but rather the overall matrix of organizations. As abolitionists like Angela Davis would argue, systemic change at entrenched institutions like the RIBA can’t be achieved solely by remarkable individuals.[13] Side stepping these legacies of power demands finding partners and coalitions beyond the matrix of extraction. Through movements like Oki’s presidential campaign, partners like FAF, ACAN and UVW-SAW are already demonstrating the power of decentralised organising. [14]

So you see, these potentialities of another world beyond Capital A Architecture, of a kinder and braver commons are already taking place today. If we let the dream persist, one day we might open our eyes to a future entirely otherwise. [15] This collective futurity is possible and its parts lie here amongst us all today.[16] Collectively facing the RIBA’s ‘Dominion Screen’ model is our path to change. Do not stay silent. Join the union.[17] Share your knowledge. Exchange kindness. Fight for solidarity.

Are you ready? We have everything to gain.

[1] The RIBA’s premises is often used for events booking. Commercial, weddings as well as in house awards 

ceremonies. The events group “by Eve” ‘s website page for the RIBA leans into the pageantry of the building. “Packed with Art Deco features, this impressive conference venue offers light, bright and flexible spaces, in the heart of London’s Marylebone. Whether you’re planning a corporate conference or private wedding breakfast, we guarantee your guests will be wowed by the setting.”

                        “Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)”, Go Ask Eve, accessed online, https://www.goaskeve.com/venues/royal-institute-of-british-architects/

[2] It is worth outlining that the rent of these spaces is a significant source of income for the institution. Events booking is part of the £5.4m “Trading Activities” declared in the RIBA’s financial statements.

RIBA Annual Report and Financial Statements, 31 December 2021, Accessed online through the charity commission, https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/210566/accounts-and-annual-returns, p. 28, p. 31

[3] In describing finishes in the RIBA Journal’s special issue to document the new building. There is a note, “Hardwood floors have been laid only in some of the public rooms, teak in narrow boards being the material used except the Indian silver graywood dance floor in the Henry Florence Hall.”

H S Goodhart-Rendel, “The R.I.B.A. New Building”, RIBA Journal, vol. 42, no. 16, November 1934, p 77

[4] Please refer to the excellent work of Neal Shasore who outlines many of these imperial history connections with the governance and formation of the RIBA.

“The subject of institutional governance—not a naturally engaging theme—in the Institute’s large meeting hall was, however, also a visible claim for a place in the imperial polity. This is a theme that ran throughout the building’s symbolic programme. It was reflected explicitly in the ornamentation; the coats of arms of the Dominions etched into the glass balustrading, and their flora and fauna depicted on a screen at the rear of the Florence Hall. This was also expressed in materials, owing much to the Empire timbers campaign run by the EMB and aided by the Building Centre.”

Shasore, Neal, Designs on Democracy: Architecture and the Public in Interwar London, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, p 82

[5] Informational material on site will lead viewers to the online RIBA website detailing more of these links

“Unpacking imperialism: The British Empire in RIBA’s building and collections”, accessed online, https://www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/Unpacking-imperialism

[6] Former RIBA CEO Alan Vallance did  issue a statement on behalf of the RIBA following the passionate discussions across the world on racial privilege, systems of oppression and the institutional accountability as a result of the police killing of George Floyd. Three years later, one can wonder what actions have been implemented. An excerpt: “We are reviewing all our assets, including our listed building at 66 Portland Place and collection items, to make sure that they reflect our commitment to equity. There are features in our building, and materials and descriptions within our collections, that are outdated and offensive or need further contextualizing: for example, references to the British Imperial past. We are working to address this to ensure our building, collections and descriptions are appropriate for audiences today. We are literally starting to 'put our house in order’.”

Vallance, Alan, “Equity, diversity and inclusion at RIBA: putting our house in order”, RIBA, 20 September 2020, accessed online, https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/knowledge-landing-page/equity-diversity-and-inclusion-putting-our-house-in-order

[7] While specific details are not known, the departure of the RIBA’s first diversity Director,  Marsha Ramroop leaving her role just a year after starting is a troubling sign that critical actions are not a top priority at the institution.

Jessel, Ella, “RIBA’s first-ever diversity director leaves after a year”, Architect’s Journal, 22 March 2022, accessed online, https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/ribas-first-ever-diversity-director-quits-after-a-year

[8] Femi Oresanya, chair of the RIBA Finding and Accessing Architecture group has called out the institution for lack of action on its ambitions to delivering changes to access in architecture. “If this is a priority then something needs to come from the executive to say it is priority and resources will be based on it. I have checked my inboxes regularly and I have not seen that.” He delivers the piercing words of;  “‘Please don’t take this the wrong way: but words are cheap and I haven’t seen any action.’”

Ing, Will, “RIBA diversity chair: ‘Words are cheap and I haven’t seen any action’”, Architect’s Journal, 5 July 2022, Accessed online, https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/riba-diversity-chair-words-are-cheap-and-i-havent-seen-any-action

[9] Shasore provides further thoughts regarding the use of empire timbers at 66 Portland Place in a recent Architectural Review piece.

“The promotion of Empire timbers has a contemporary resonance and relevance. Its histories help us understand the entanglements of the ecological emergency and coloniality, and how these have operated – and continue to operate – in the making of the built environment. If we really want to ‘decolonise’ architecture, it is crucial to render those entanglements legible and to develop a set of strategies to reinscribe and reimagine them with new values – not to suppress or hide them. In the case of Empire timber, we must not only contend with overtly problematic iconography, as seen in the EMB’s posters and RIBA’s Dominion Screen – it is the material itself that is a symbol of extraction, often interwoven into the fabric of buildings and their interiors. At present, strategies to engage with ‘contested heritage’ are subsumed in a febrile culture war – but we should endeavour to develop more nuanced and ambiguous interventions when confronted with the legacy of Empire timbers".

Shasore, Neal, “Empire Timber”, The Architectural Review, 10 April 2023, Accessed online, https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/empire-timber?tkn=1

[10] Maria Lugones is key in outline Is key in outlining the relationships between modernity and intersectional bodies as places of violence.

“It is part of their history that only white bourgeois women have consistently counted as women so described in the West. Females excluded from that description were not just their subordinates. They were also understood to be animals in a sense that went further than the identification of white women with nature, infants, and small animals. They were understood as animals in the deep sense of “without gender”, sexually marked as female, but without characteristics of femininity. Women racialized as inferior were turned from animals into veracious modified versions of “women” as it fit the processes of Eurocentred global capitalism.”

Lugones, Maria, “The Coloniality of Gender”, in The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development, 2016, p.13

[11] Patrick Wolfe explores the relationships between settler colonialism, race and labour.

“Settlers brought with them a conquering inheritance that had been forged through centuries of colonial expansion and associated class struggle on an increasingly global scale. The two were inseparable, the cotton that the industrial proletariat made up in Manchester’s dark mills being sourced from colonised labour put to work in Egypt, India, and the US Deep South, the two sources of labour further providing an expanding market for the products of their involuntary collaboration.”

Wolfe, Patrick. Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race, Verso, 2016, 8-31