RIBA often puts on some great little exhibitions of an architectural bent and this is no exception, a study of buildings old and new which had to be built in a very special way to fit an awkward site. The oldest is an Arts and Crafts cottage melded into a rocky Leicestershire landscape in 1898, complete with an original feature article from Country Life, and the newest is a boxy house conjured out of a water tower in Norfolk in 2021. Other live-in-spaces include a studio tucked into a Walworth railway viaduct, a holiday home inside a derelict Warwickshire castle and a flatpack house whose components had to be delivered to a remote Highland lochside. Grand Designs wannabes should perhaps take note. Rather larger projects also appear, including Coventry Cathedral (religious sensibilities), 55 Broadway (working railway underneath) and the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery (royal hatred). There are models to scrutinise, original plans to peruse and potted summaries to make sense of it all, plus a lightweight squidgy sofa to rest on in case they ever get the video content working. You won't spend more than 30 minutes here but you can always top up your visit with a trip to RIBA's cafe opposite (and thanks Martin for the tip-off).
Hard Graft at: Wellcome Collection, Euston Road from: 10am to 6pm (not Monday) until: 27 April
What aspect of social health have the Wellcome curators chosen to highlight this time? Ostensibly hard work but with a subtitled undertone of "work, health and rights", and when you step inside not even quite that. Instead they've picked three workplaces to focus on and no the office doesn't get a look in, instead it's Plantation, Street and Home. Plantations originally meant enslavement but even after emancipation they left a toxic legacy of petrochemical cemeteries and the American penal system, as you'll learn. The 'Street' section skips over hawkers and sweepers before focusing unashamedly on prostitution and the importance of standing together, then 'Home' deals with domestic drudgery, particularly that of migrant servants. I found the whole thing unsatisfyingly diffuse, almost boxticking for the sake of it, despite a couple of standout displays.
There's often an interesting exhibition on the mezzanine at the rear of the Entrance Hall. Alas this is more worthy than interesting, a very long board highlighting global conservation projects, so well done but don't expect anyone to be interested in the detail.
Hello Brain! at: Francis Crick Institute, Midland Road from: 10am to 6pm (not Sun, Mon, Tue) until: 20 June (closed 15 December - 7 January)
This giant research hothouse beside St Pancras is mostly packed with biochemists but the public is welcome to access a slice of the ground floor with a cafe and a toddler-friendly playzone. Its small exhibition space is currently devoted to all things cerebral, including a set of knitted neurons courtesy of Australian art project Neural Knitworks. The exhibits are spread across a dozen cases, labelled at child height, many of which recount what smiling figures are doing upstairs. I learnt about railway worker Phineas Gage whose personality changed after an explosion impaled an irod rod in his brain, I discovered how scientists have mapped the neural connections of fruit fly maggots, and I compared the brain size of various animals from a goldfish to a capybara. The entire exhibition text is available on the Crick's website if you'd rather just learn stuff and skip the knitting.
Soil, Toil and Table at: Lethaby Gallery, Granary Square from: 11am to 6pm (not Mondays) until: 25 January (closed 16 December - 13 January)
If you want to see what St Martin's most creative students have been up to, here's a roomful of projects responding to the challenges of agriculture and food production, which opened yesterday. Each tackles themes of cultivation, culture, dining or renewal, and may be a practical proposal or an utter flight of fancy. I'm putting Justina Alexandroff's Gutt Plugs in the latter category, colourful acrylic stool-testing devices 'designed to give pleasure to the user'. Elsewhere Pati made symbolic clay tiles by repurposing soil from HS2, Ruiyi reconstructed crockery by forcing forks through plates and Vaishnavi plonked two coloured squares on the ground and claims they 'explore the foundational pillars of civilisation'. She'll go far.
Lost Victorian City at: The London Archives, Clerkenwell from: 10am to 4.30pm (not Fri, Sat, Sun) until: 5 February (also open Sat 14 Dec)
The first floor lobby at the former London Metropolitan Archives is often used to display a themed historical throwback, and the current exhibition looks at Victorian sights and buildings that no longer exist. The Crystal Palace is a fairly obvious inclusion, the Royal Aquarium and the backstreets of Limehouse's Chinatown somewhat less so. A particular treat is the work of very early photographers who captured images of buildings about to be demolished, for example the Oxford Arms coaching inn near the Old Bailey which survived the Great Fire but which was lost to developers in 1877. 122 contemporary photos by SPROL (the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London) are available for your perusal here. It's a bit odd walking round an exhibition while researchers from the adjacent library keep popping through to use the toilet, but I did learn from an adjacent display that the phrase 'to spend a penny' comes from the Great Exhibition because that was the cost to use the first public flushing toilets in the refreshment rooms.
