Visit to the Royal Institute of British Architects

I recently had an opportunity to visit the home of the Royal Institute of British Architects at 66 Portland Place in London. It could be my last opportunity for a while as from early 2025 the building will be closed and all of the collections moved out to facilitate a £58 million retrofit and investment in new technology. Did you know that anyone can visit the RIBA? There is a bookshop, cafe, exhibition space and library as well as a magnificent lecture theatre and conference facilities set in the architect designed HQ. You can read more about RIBA’s plans in this article, published in the RIBA Journal.

My visit was organised by ARCLIB, Architecture Librarian’s Group and, as you can imagine, our day was spent exploring the library and rare books collections as well as having a tour of the other wonderful facilities.  Students and architects can visit the library for free. It is a more traditional library than ours, seeming very quiet in comparison! There are members of staff on hand to help you navigate the open access book collections, in fact they actively encourage you to ask for help.  The collection is arranged using a more unusual library classification system called UDC whereas we use the Dewey Decimal system so do ask for help in locating what you want, if you visit.  You can view the Library Catalogue online (scroll to the bottom of the page) and although it is rather clunky, it is invaluable in helping me to unearth very specialist information sources to answer student enquiries.  Thankfully, it will be upgraded as part of the £58 million investment!

At the moment the different parts of the RIBA collections are held in various locations across the city and some require you to book an appointment in advance. They range from books, journals, photographs and manuscripts to objects, architectural models, audio recordings and the institutional archive – great for those exploring family history where architects are involved! We are very lucky to have access to the photographic archive online through RibaPix.

Part of our day out included browsing some very special rare books and journals. My favourite was a book of designs in braille, Fondation Louis Vuitton: une architecture en mouvement.  If you are interested in this area of research, a page on the RIBA website celebrating Disability History Month provides information on the subject of inclusive design. When the refit happens, the dispersed collections will be housed together making this a truly national architecture collection.

Later on in the day we met with the RIBA Publishing team who actively seek new topics and authors and were really interested in hearing what topics students are currently researching. They brought along some of the latest RIBA publications for us to look at.  I wasn’t sure if we had them, then when I got home and checked, we did indeed have them but in electronic format.  It’s not the same as looking at and feeling the covers but with our e-first purchasing policy, I have to buy the ebooks for you. At least they are convenient and easy to search that way.  You can see our most recent RIBA books in the Library Catalogue and, don’t forget, that many others can only be found and accessed through the Construction Information Service.

The final discussion of the day was led by the Executive Director Architecture Programmes and Collections, Oliver Urquhart Irvine, on preparations for the move and the hopes for the future of the RIBA library and other collections. So, if you’re curious and want to visit, go soon!

~ Greta Friggens, Faculty Librarian (CCI)