There are three forms of visual art: painting is art to look at, sculpture is art you can walk around, and architecture is art you can walk through.

~ Dan Rice

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RIBA, 66 Portland Place

Our explorations continued today with a trip to the less eclectic RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) at 66 Portland Place.  This couldn’t be more different from the orderly chaos of YumChaa, and clearly appeals to the professional rather than the scatter-brained, unemployed types (I refer here to Mandi and myself).  We sat upstairs while men in business suits had serious discussions about important things, and women in smart skirts and blouses gossiped in a manner that made them sound incredibly intellectual.  Mandi and I, on the other hand, spent most of our time laughing so much that we choked on our food several times.  The building itself pretty much summed up the quotes on the main staircase, which reminded us about the importance of architecture within society:

 “The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.” (~Frank Lloyd Wright)

“Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul” (~Ernest Dimnet)

Architecture: art meets functionality; creativity meets science. With its rich applied decoration and sculpture, the RIBA headquarters are a classic and stunning example of early 1930s Art Deco architecture.  Okay, okay, I lifted that straight from the website.  But the design of the building is great, as you’d expect from such an institution as RIBA.  If you’re really interested in the design of RIBA’s headquarters, there’s a very helpful downloadable guide which you may find enlightening.  

Mandi and I, as ever, were interested only in the food, and we were not let down.  A turkey and ham sandwich and a butternut squash filo tart have never tasted so good.  

The portions were more than generous and the available side salads all looked far too delicious to be healthy.  Mandi and I both opted for the roasted carrot, rocket, mozzarella and sundried tomato salad to accompany our food. It was divine.  I have no more to say.

Once again, Mandi set about sketching while I, her muse, managed to multi-task by both being her sitter and reading a book. 

Imagination Gallery, Store street

Soon, the staff began clear up the café area and started to put two foot tall martini glasses in the centre of each table.  While Mandi and I watched on curiously and eavesdropped on the conversations between panicked event organisers and the arriving musicians, a woman approached us and politely asked us to leave: the London Clinic was holding a function, and we weren’t invited.  So Mandi and I trudged out into the dreary, rainy, British winter and decided to head (the long way) towards the School of African and Oriental Studies, where Mandi spent four long years of her life studying Chinese and Development Studies. I’m sure she felt right at home back in the JCR surrounded by all those hard-working students, inhaling the pungent odour of weed.  

Mandi, Steph and me, SOAS

Our friend Steph met us and we ended the day in style, feasting on the most readily available of all student foods. Note to self: gravy and ketchup do not go. But before we rushed off home, Mandi insisted, we couldn’t leave this world-class institution, a leading centre at the forefront of all things African and Oriental, without seeing the lodestone of the university: a vending machine that will make and cook a pizza to order, all in less than 3 minutes.  

This amazing device, an invention that Claudio Torghele of Italy dedicated 10 years of his life to perfecting, mixes the base, stretches it out, adds the tomato paste and your desired toppings, and then bakes the whole thing before serving it in a cardboard box, and all while you watching in admiration through the Perspex front. I don’t know whether to be in awe or slightly despondent. Is this the future of pizza, and all those other dishes that have formed the foundation of countless traditional cuisines around the world? I don’t know. Despite the obvious novelty of watching a bright red machine cook a pizza, I still think I’d rather watch a tall, dark, handsome Italian working away to produce this classic dish for me.

Umm, yes please!

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