Freestyle is an exhibition at the RIBA in London and explores key moments in the evolution of architectural styles over the last 500 years and its relationship to the evolution of mass media. Drawing on RIBA’s collections, Space Popular uses virtual reality to examine architecture styles of the past – from the Renaissance to postmodernism – while considering technology’s impact on contemporary buildings and spaces.

Style is ever present in architectural history: the rise of one leads to the fall of another. Although style can be deeply personal, its shifting appreciation and use in architecture is a collective practice. It is determined by the building technologies available at the time of its origin as much as by ideological movements, social hierarchies and cultural values.

Drawing on RIBA’s Collections, Space Popular has been commissioned to reconsider the richness of stylistic movements in architecture. Taking a cue from the influential treatise by Renaissance architect Sebastiano Serlio, they traces a narrative through architectural history, from the point when mass media enables style to spread freely, transcending cultural and geographical borders. Propelled by a succession of media formats prevalent in each historic period, Freestyle demonstrates the link between architectural design and popular culture, from the printing press to Pinterest. 

Through an immersive environment that ties together rare books and stereoscopic prints with newly designed objects, Space Popular employs virtual reality to animate a discussion on the continuous evolution of architectural style – not only to examine styles of the past 500 years, but as the means by which to consider the impact of technology on contemporary and emergent styles.

A large-scale model of buildings in Britain, abstracted from RIBA’s Collections, depicts this transformation of distinct historical styles, while an information-rich carpet illustrates the technological tools relating to each style era. 

Visitors are invited on a virtual reality tour through a four-act animation, exploring our consumption of architectural style across time periods to the present day -- where according to Space Popular we find ourselves cast us into a dizzying whirlpool of information and inspiration. On screen, styles can crystallise and dissipate at the speed of a click or swipe; how will architecture keep up? 

The display culminates in a unique display of VR worlds imagined and produced by students at the London Design and Engineering University Technical College, as a window towards potential stylistic futures.