Catalogue number: DES-LJG-3-3-2-21. James Gardner Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives.
A new display of designs by James Gardner relating to his role as chief exhibition designer for the Commonwealth Institute opens in the Faculty of Arts this month. The featured drawings were produced as part of Gardner’s scheme for a permanent display that represented each member state of the Commonwealth and that was intended to promote cultural exchange and trade between them.
The Institute building, a striking copper-roofed structure, was designed by the architects Robert Matthew Johnson Marshall, the very same firm who were appointed architects of the Faculty of Arts Grand Parade building in 1967. A legacy of the Imperial Institute that was established in 1887, the Commonwealth Institute was set up as a re-configured political edifice in the wake of post-war de-colonisation, embracing former imperialist ambitions with a rhetoric of democratic and mutually beneficial co-operation. Design played a major part in the representation of these ideals. Gardner’s dioramas depicted modern industrial development alongside contemporised notions of the exotic and the colourful. HRH Queen Elizabeth II was given a central position within the constellation of member states. Gardner’s designs for the three-storey open plan public exhibition space in which these dioramas were located also embraced interplay between architectural form and exhibition display, as pioneered on the South Bank site of the 1951 Festival of Britain.
In 2002 the Institute closed and the permanent exhibition was removed. These drawings remain the most vivid record of its evolution, from initial ideas to worked-up presentation drawings. Digital images of these designs are to be included in the current Design Archives initiative which will see over 2,000 items from across the archive group incorporated in the JISC-hosted portal ‘Images for Education’, to be launched this summer. The Commonwealth Institute building is due to be redeveloped as the new home of the Design Museum, seven architects having been shortlisted to present detailed plans for the 100,000 square feet site before the winner is announced in April 2010.
This display was produced to coincide with the Heritage Impact Conference 2010 organised by Dr Jaime Kaminski of the University of Brighton Business School that takes place in the Faculty 22-23 April.
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