Peeking through the brass barrelled lenses of model wall, one of three exhibits forming the Architecture Foundation exhibition on the work of Jamie Fobert Architects, offers a series of intimate, intriguing but enigmatic glimpses into the current projects of this critically regarded but somewhat elusive practice.

They are just that…glimpses. Moving to the rear of the black concertina screen, demure centrepiece of the gallery interior, one discovers that the light filled interiors ‘inhabited’ with the help of the lenses, are not details from refined models of complete proposals. Rather, they are moments of coalescence within a series of taped together fragments - three dimensional, exploratory studies of works, frozen in progress.

The other pieces are similarly un-effusive and again appear exploratory rather than declaratory in their concerns.

Light Box Strip, a continuous sequence of small, backlit transparencies, offers a thumbnail sketch of the practice’s output. However, with almost no supporting information, it is only really comprehensive in its documentation of the fruitful relationship that Fobert has established with photographers David Grandorge and Sue Barr. Their intuitive grasp of the work, developed in the course of a ten year conversation, allows this piece to reveal more about continuities, than it does about detail.

The third exhibit occupies the yard. This is a 1:5 volumetric model of a gallery interior, from the practice’s largest project to date, the proposed extension to Tate St Ives, won in competition last year. It continues the casual directness of the working models, except that this one can be literally inhabited, at least for a moment, by ducking beneath it. Once within, the lack of floor somewhat undermines the sense of the room’s proportions, making this only partially successful as a spatial investigation. There is also something slightly superfluous in the billboard sized photograph of the Cornish sea beyond it, given that the proposed interior has no window from which to contemplate such a view.

The quiet confidence demonstrated in this playful self-effacement is perhaps the exhibition’s principal quality. Frustratingly, the three pieces do not investigate the refined rawness and meticulous exploration of construction and material that characterises much of the practice’s output. However, their partial nature does, rather artfully, elucidate another concern – the privileging of inhabitation and space over the description of form. Watching other visitors peering and bending to look through, along and under; one becomes aware that there is a certain generosity in the exhibits’ dependence, for their success, upon engagement.

In this they reflect the projects. These too rely upon physical dialogue, stretching and adjusting the city’s contingencies to capture richly modelled spaces. Laconic, they emerge from, or disappear into, the material conditions in which they find themselves. The most celebrated, Anderson House, is literally invisible, completely enveloped by London’s fabric. Similarly, the public works have been elegant, undemonstrative and fleeting installations, most recently for the three days of the Frieze Art Fair. Now, in defining his most important commissions to date, Kettles Yard in Cambridge and the Tate extension, Fobert appears determined to continue to resist the making of overtly iconic forms. Indeed, here at least, we are given no clue as to exteriors. Perhaps, ultimately, this is the conundrum that, for him, this engaging but modest exhibition reflects upon.