Landscape Architecture: Landscape Architecture: - School of ...

The courtyard café lies outside the main wall, an escape from the intensity of
an exhibition but also allowing views back into the gallery.
In the entrance lobby, the powerful, three-storey diagonal wall leads to the
reception desk, which itself points towards the way into the gallery.
If the exterior is intriguing, the interior is compelling.
Behind a full-height door in the northern wall is a triple-height
entry space with a diagonal wall running from the door to the
reception desk and a waiting area in the right angle of this
triangle. White-painted and grey-floored, its texture comes
from a multiplicity of light and shadow, and depending on the
institute’s programme sometimes includes displays. The main
exhibition space lies behind the desk. Sandwiched between
two deep walls, which contain the mechanical and electrical
services, it is an essential part of the design strategy to keep
the gallery space as open plan as possible.
This also called for some ingenious structural engineering
from Arup. In the centre of the building, running parallel with
its long axis, is a rooflight that brings daylight into the top
floor. On either side are 27-metre (89-foot) long deep beams
from which the top and first floors are hung, leaving columnfree
space on the ground floor of 465 square metres (5,005
square feet) and 4 metres (13 feet) high, with the loads
brought to the ground on columns at either end of the beams.
For its opening exhibition, the Turrell retrospective, it has
been divided into a series of cellular spaces whose limits and
shapes are called into question by Turrell’s lightworks. In one,
a deep-blue light seems to be a screen, but trying to touch it
reveals that it is actually a space. Others play with the notion
of the actual limits and shapes of spaces.
These effects obviously require the windows to be blanked
out. Though this configuration shows one aspect of the window
detailing, which includes blinds for filtering or blanking out
daylight as well as artificial lighting, the possibility of being
entirely open and daylit appeals to Dance as it shows off the
architectural concept more clearly. The institute’s remit, he
explains, includes performances and film showings as well as
exhibitions, implying a sense of interaction.
Central to this aim is a long, thin café, carved out of what
was an irregular and derelict courtyard between the building
and the site perimeter. A long, subtle curve conceals the
irregularities and a store alongside the boundary, giving the
illusion of space, while the ultra-clear glass gives the
impression of being outside. The full-height openings in the
original facade could potentially give views into the gallery.
Even with such views blocked out, the café is a congenial
space, and by breaking through the building’s surface
provides a restful and slightly detached area which recognises
that looking at art can be physically and mentally demanding,
but may also benefit from the possibility of refreshment and
social contact. The offices are concealed behind the southern
service wall on the first and second floors, with a meeting
room below them on the ground floor.
In diagrammatic terms the design concept is simple, but
it demands a high degree of technical skill to achieve such
effects with deceptive ease. What is really impressive,
though, is not the technology, but the concept, which shows
a sensitivity to the area’s history and future possibilities and
to the experience of looking at art. In this sense,
architecture and art are very close: the concept treats the
building as a found object, but one that has inherent
qualities that can speak to us precisely for its apparent
ordinariness. What the design does is to find them, make
them manifest, and use them as a subtle background to
whatever display or event may take place within them. It
will be interesting to see what happens as the institute’s
programme unfolds. 4
Text © 2007 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 120, 122(b) & 125 © Hélène
Binet; pp 121, 122(t), 123 & 124 © 2006 Borgos Dance
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