All works

Tender Documents

Watercolour and print · 2026

Drawings of banknotes with everything but the architecture removed. Buildings that usually stand for national identity, permanence and financial security return to the landscape. The colours and security patterns of the notes become watercolour washes, creating a different atmosphere for each printed building. The works sit between romantic landscape painting and forgery. Four A1 works were shown at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in 2026.

Four framed works from Tender Documents, showing the euro, Iranian rial, US dollar and British pound.

Four works

Forty-eight variations on the British ten-pound note.

British pound

48 × £10 notes. Godmersham Park House, the Kent estate owned by Jane Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight, sits within a field of orange and pink washes.

Forty-two variations on the twenty-euro note with Gothic windows and doorways.

Euro

42 × €20 notes. The Gothic windows and doorways refer to European architectural history without identifying a particular building or privileging a member state.

Thirty-five variations on the one-million-rial note with blue industrial structures.

Iranian rial

35 × 1m Iranian rial notes. The oil and gas processing plant at the South Pars gas field is repeated against changing blue and yellow washes.

Forty variations on the US one-dollar bill with a pyramid motif.

US dollar

40 × US $1 notes. The unfinished pyramid and Eye of Providence float within green watercolour washes.

Tender Documents installed at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in 2026.

Systems of Support

Four A1 works shown in Systems of Support at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, 18 September–29 November 2026. Watercolour ink washes and direct-to-media printing.

Photography © Jacqueline Fuijkschot

Closer installation view of the four Tender Documents works at IABR.

Four A1 works

The repeated banknote formats gather individual washes into larger fields. Each atmospheric setting differs, while the printed architecture remains.

Photography © Jacqueline Fuijkschot

A framed ten-pound-note composition in orange and pink, with architectural details.

Ten pounds

Architecture is separated from the familiar information of the banknote and returned to an atmospheric landscape.

Two orange and pink ten-pound-note studies.

British pound · £10

An individual ten-pound-note study with orange and pink washes.

British pound · £10

Two two-hundred-euro studies featuring a gate within pale blue and orange washes.

Euro · €200

Two further two-hundred-euro studies with pale watercolour washes and a printed gate.

Euro · €200

An individual two-hundred-euro study with a printed gate and a pale yellow wash.

Euro · €200

Two Iranian rial studies showing a processing plant in blue and yellow washes.

Iranian rial · 1,000,000 rials

An Iranian rial study with an industrial plant in a pale blue wash.

Iranian rial · 1,000,000 rials

Another Iranian rial study with blue industrial structures beneath a yellow wash.

Iranian rial · 1,000,000 rials

Two green one-dollar studies with the pyramid and Eye of Providence.

US dollar · $1

A green one-dollar study with the pyramid and Eye of Providence.

US dollar · $1

Two green hundred-dollar studies with a printed building and trees.

US dollar · $100

An individual hundred-dollar study with a building and trees in green washes.

US dollar · $100

Another hundred-dollar study with architecture set within green washes.

US dollar · $100

Two UAE banknote studies with a red tower and streetlights.

UAE dirham · 100 dirhams

A UAE banknote study with a red tower surrounded by pale blue and pink washes.

UAE dirham · 100 dirhams

Another UAE banknote study with a red tower, streetlights and coloured washes.

UAE dirham · 100 dirhams

For exhibitions, acquisitions and commissions: [email protected].

Opening the files…

Selected works

50 works in 4 files. More to come.

About Sam Jacob

Sam Jacob makes work that explores the strange lives of familiar things. His work draws on the images, objects and fragments of history through which we construct ideas of nature, culture and ourselves.

Across drawings, objects, installations and curatorial projects, he examines how architecture and material things embody social and cultural ideas, how ‘fictions’ become ‘real’, how ideas become things, and how things become ideas.

Collage, copying and processes of reconstruction are central to this practice, which also moves between digital processes and physical materiality. These transformations and translations bring both humour and unease to questions of memory, value and meaning.

Solo exhibitions include Against Nature (2023) and Empire of Ice Cream (2019) at Betts Project, London, and Disappear Here at the RIBA Architecture Gallery (2018). His work has also been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A, MAK Vienna, the National Museum in Oslo, the Graham Foundation in Chicago and Secession, Vienna, and at Manifesta and the Venice and Chicago architecture biennials.

Curatorial projects include A Clockwork Jerusalem, co-curated with Wouter Vanstiphout for the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; The Lie of the Land at MK Gallery; and Pattern as Politics, with Priya Khanchandani, at the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Jacob is a columnist for ArtReview, writes Strangeharvest, and is the author of Make It Real: Architecture as Enactment. He is Professor and Dean of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Die Angewandte), and directs Sam Jacob Studio, a collaborative architecture and design practice.

For exhibitions, gallery enquiries, acquisitions and commissions, contact [email protected].