Institute of Patentees And Inventors Part 2 Project 2003 Sally Raper Oxford Brookes University Oxford | UK The concept for the Institute of Inventors and Patentees derives from studies of a city accessory; the handbag.The handbag is a transient public display piece that accommodates our private possessions. The chaotic arrangement of the contents is disguised by a sleek, smooth exterior skin showing that there is something inside without revealing what it is.Like the contents of a handbag the institute is squashed into its site between Fleet Street and the Embankment in London. It is a container collecting and storing prototypes of all the patented inventions. The patenting process in the institute is defined by the expanding hanging tubes which have a fixed programme, while the outside, the place of the inventors, conference and conversation, has the opposite quality – a chaotic overlapping world created by a multi-layered façade. The internal glass collages reflections and shadows of oneself, others, objects and spaces upon each other, creating chaos and an uncontrollable form of disguise for the occupants. The external skin of polycarbonate transmits glimpses of the activity within, revealing movement through projected shadows and silhouettes to the public.When the tubes become too large they are relocated outside the confines of the institute, spreading into the dead and un-used spaces of the city. They then begin to engage with the city, exhibiting their collections in each new address. The scheme is a response to an alternative Institute for the Inventors and Patentees. Its aims are to investigate how architecture can respond to the complex relationship set up between these two characters: patentee and inventor. It is this game of open and closed played between those developing an idea and those developing a product that we wish to exploit in the building’s architecture. Jewel like in character, the scheme combines ideas of spectacle in the city with the practical issues of storage. It is open rather than private and welcomes the casual passer-by as well as the Institute member, who use it as a destination. In this way it is perhaps more like a park bench or tea hut which opens its doors to the transient city population.These storage vessels are dotted around the city and adopt a theme for its locality, by characterising its contents according to local interests. Large storage stockings housing parts of warehouse machinery along the docks and tea pots cups and spoons around Temple.This scheme is a creative response to the British preoccupation with invention, collecting and archiving. It resurrects these ideas from the darkness of storage and displays them in a celebratory fashion.