This exhibition, which has come to the RIBA from the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin, provides an opportunity both to look back at the life and contribution of Robert (Bob) Maxwell, and to encounter the series of portrait busts created by Maxwell’s wife, the artist/architect Celia Scott.

Maxwell, who died in 2020, was one of a remarkable group of British architect/teacher/theorist/critics born between 1920 and 1930: Colin Rowe and James Stirling (both fellow students of Maxwell’s at Liverpool University) Alan Colquhoun, Colin St. John Wilson, Kenneth Frampton and John Miller. All (except Frampton) appear in plaster or bronze within the exhibition, their individual characters captured by Scott through expression or context. Scott describes the busts as ironic, their inherent monumentality subverted by a disarming intimacy.

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