The Hayward - one of Britain's most thought provoking and bold buildings - has been transferred into an adult playground. "Psycho Buildings" presents artist's take on architecture, offering a challenging and inspirational assessment of how we use space. The exhibition opens with Ernesto Neto, immediately invoking smells and textures I'd previously experienced at Tate Liverpool. This offered a perfect mirror for the feelings invoked by the exhibition as a whole - uneasy familiarity, brooding uncertainty, and awe at majestic craftsmanship. Do Ho Suh's 'Fallen Star' is the perfect sculptural homage to PhD transit, showing an imaculate scale model of his childhood home crashing through his university digs in New York. A simple, brutal take on migration and cultural disjoint.
This leads towards Los Carpinteros' 'Show Room'', an animated still depicting some form of explosion within a minimal urban space. It was haunting, eerie, and demonstrated the seemlessness of the total experience. Beautifully crafted fabrics and imaginative bolser wood constructions made repeat performances, and the creative use of outside space. The viewer was thrust fully inside the show, exploring all the way, getting lost, following people through doors without signs, wandering and wondering whether you've missed anything out.
The reason I noticed the exhibition was the large "Crystal Maze" type external bubble, sadly closed due to the weather. But the roof was also utilised for a scaffolded cinema playing black and white films to the soundtrack of the London traffic below. Elsewhere a sunken roof had been transformed into a boating lake, and we bobbed along an infinity pool a few storeys high. Pretty terrifying, but an increible inversion of space.
This was art as it should be - it grabbed you by the shirt, slapped inhibitions off your face, but in a thought through, holistic manner. Catch it while you can.
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