Adjaye’s Rivington Place opens

Rivington Place, a new London arts centre designed by architect David Adjaye, opens to the public tomorrow.

The £8m building, measuring 1445m2, will house international visual arts organisation Iniva, photography agency Autograph ABP and a handful of small creative businesses.

It contains exhibition spaces, a visual arts library, an education space, Autograph ABP’s photography archive, a café bar with a late license and workspaces for two or three local businesses, including Planet Poetry. Iniva and Autograph will programme the public gallery spaces.

Funded by the Arts Council and Barclays Bank, Rivington Place will showcase culturally diverse and international artwork.

At a launch ceremony yesterday Adjaye said, ‘Rivington Place is hugely significant as it’s my first completed arts building anywhere in the world. It’s a natural addition to the East End’s existing landscape of art institutions and reinforces the area’s position as a national and international arts and culture destination.’

Iniva’s recently appointed director, Sebastian Lopez, said, ‘We want to inject new ideas and energy. We want to challenge a cultural climate in which diversity can be presented as a carnival of exotic names and where the issues that really matter are often put aside.’

The opening exhibition, London is the Place for Me, explores the subject of immigration to Britain. It runs at the centre on Rivington Place, London EC2 until 24 November.