Pier Vittorio Aureli
Caruso St John and Thomas Demand
Nigel Coates
Shin Egashira
Richard Goodwin
Jacques Hondelatte
Manthey Kula
Office Kersten Geers David van Severen
Fred Scott


Opening hours may change weekly. Please check:
Wednesday 4 to Saturday 7 May, 12 – 5 pm

Exhibition runs until 21 May 2022

works | press release | Namely, words Part 1

‘Namely, words: part 2’, is the second installment of the exhibition at Betts Project; the first part opened in May 2021 after the easings of various lockdowns. The group show brings together and celebrates the work of architects and artists who have exhibited at the gallery since it opened in March 2013. 

‘Namely, words’ is dedicated to the common and at times intricate ground between architecture and writing. Questioning the notion of drawing and building as being the primary medium of the architect, this exhibition turns to literature for alternative reflections towards architecture and to enrich the way we think and talk about architectural practice. 

Writing and making often utilise a shared conceptual vocabulary — structure, narrative, texture, style — and have each played key roles in the cultural experience of modernity. Through a series of 18 paired dialogues of drawing and text, ‘Namely, words’ seeks to explore writing’s capacity to engage with the lived experience of place and reveal the dialogue between architecture and writing as complex and inseparable social practices. 

For this exhibition, Betts Project invited architects to present either a new or existing drawn or sculpted work and to accompany it with a piece of writing they admire. The exhibition reads in the same way as an annotated book; the literary choices act as postscripts to the works in the exhibition, becoming a way of re-reading the works, while assigning new definitions through the use of text. 

In the exhibition, multiple copies of the texts are hung on the wall for visitors to tear off and take home. An exhibition catalogue also containing part 1 of the series will follow.

Part 1 of ‘Namely, words’ included:
Alexander Brodsky, Philip Christou, Tony Fretton, Günter Günschel, Sam Jacob, Peter Märkli, Studio Mumbai/Bijoy Jain, Denise Scott Brown, Inge Vinck, Jan de Vylder, Peter Wilson and Zoe Zenghelis