Fanciful Figures in Contemporary Architecture

Join Assistant Curator Dr Erin McKellar and architects Nimi Attanayake, Tim O’Callaghan and Hikaru Nissanke for an online discussion on the use of figures in contemporary architectural practice.

Many architectural drawings include small figures – people and animals – to lend a sense of scale, depth, use and narrative to a project, an idea explored our current exhibition, Fanciful Figures, which features historic examples drawn mainly from the Museum’s collections. But architects today still use these figures, and have been doing so in increasingly thoughtful ways as they strive to illustrate how public projects will improve the everyday lives of their clients and reveal how these projects are grounded in specific places with particular users in mind.

Erin will be joined by Nimi Attanayake and Tim O’Callaghan of nimtim architects and Hikaru Nissanke of OMMX to find out why they add figures to their plans, who these people are and where and why they are placed within schemes.