World's first inflatable folly.

An 8 metre inflated black sphere punctured by a half-timbered structure landed at the RIBA from 15 March to 2 May. The too-big structure was squashed awkwardly into the 7 metre high space of the Florence Hall at the heart of the RIBA's Art Deco headquarters in London. Inside, a wooden stair led up to a viewing platform, here the surrounding void was broken by small pinpricks of light, made by transparent panels cut in the sphere.

The installation, entitled In a Lonely Place, was designed by Fat (Fashion Architecture Taste), who describe themselves as 'a company that makes architecture and art (and all kinds of things in between)'. In a Lonely Place was the first in a series of installations specially commissioned by the RIBA Trust.

Speaking about the installation, Sam Jacob from Fat said: 'Entering the installation recalls Etienne-Louis Boullee's Cenotaph to Newton--a spherical structure in which the viewer was presented with a man-made approximation of the universe--in this case, for a less than perfect world'.

In a Lonely Place combined different kinds of architecture: high-tech inflatable and nostalgic historicism, creating ambiguities of form and formlessness, of narrative and abstraction, and of object and experience. The result is a modern day folly that explores the idea of architecture as a series of experiences made richer by drawing on diverse references, materials and techniques. In a Lonely Place was produced by inflate.