In 1829 Sir John Soane was made an Honorary Academician of the (Royal) Scottish Academy. The awarding of the honour followed closely after a personal donation of his Designs for Public and Private Buildings (London 1828) to the fledgling Academy library. From this act, believed to be the first donation by a practicing artist or architect, the Academy’s library has forever been bound up with the inventive discovery of books and objects. Soane’s extraordinary house became known as an ‘Academy of Architecture’, a place where students could learn not only from the collection, but also the ingenious and eclectic way that it was displayed.

In 2016 the Academy approached architect member Richard Murphy to design something that could bring this inventive discovery to bear on the sometimes hard to display smaller objects of the RSA collections and library. Taking Soane and his own Grand Designs House of the Year winning House at Hart Street as inspiration, Murphy designed Wunderkammer (which translates from the German as ‘Room of Wonder’, but is usually referred to in English as a ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’) as a bespoke means of displaying the Academy’s library and collections.

The Wunderkammer was first unveiled in the Ages of Wonder exhibition in 2017 and now finds a permanent home in the RSA President’s Room; takin on different personalities as it houses changing displays of objects.