285 June 2018 - Gryffe Advertizer

4
The Advertizer
Paisley Museum To Be Transformed
Ambitious £42m plans to transform Paisley Museum into an international-class
destination have pulled off a major coup, with the appointment of AL_A - the
award-winning architects behind some of the world’s most striking buildings.
The fi rm’s founder Amanda Levete - a former winner of UK architecture’s top
honour, the RIBA Stirling Prize - says the Paisley Museum project is ‘one of the
most radical briefs she has read’.
It will be the fi rst Scottish commission for the London-based practice, who have
designed landmark projects including the Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition
Road Quarter - for which they this week won the prestigious RIBA London
Building of the Year 2018.
They were also this month shortlisted for the competition to redesign the visitor
experience at Paris’s iconic Eiffel Tower.
The Paisley Museum transformation is the fl agship project in Renfrewshire
Council’s planned £100m investment in cultural venues and infrastructure -
key to Paisley’s UK City of Culture 2021 bid legacy, and the wider plans to use
the town’s unique assets to transform its future.
The museum will close this autumn and re-open in 2022 as a revitalised home
for Paisley’s internationally-signifi cant textile heritage and outstanding natural
history, art and science collections, expected to nearly quadruple current visitor
numbers to 125,000 a year.
The project will include a contemporary addition to the existing Victorian-era
building, creating a new entrance and museum spaces - including a cafe and
shop - landscaping and signifi cantly-improved access.
There will be major revamps to all four museum buildings including the Coats
Observatory, while a complete internal redesign will reimagine the visitor
experience and double the number of objects on public display.
Current AL_A projects include the revitalisation of the historic Galeries Lafayette
department store in Paris; a new centre for the cancer care charity Maggie’s
in Southampton; and two new buildings for Wadham College at the University
of Oxford. Completed projects include Central Embassy, a 1.5m sq ft luxury
shopping mall and hotel in Bangkok, and Sky TV’s new London media campus.
Levete was recently named the winner of the 2018 Jane Drew Prize, an annual
lifetime achievement award for an architect who has furthered the progress of
women in the industry.
She said:
“This is one
of the most
radical briefs I
have read - it
triggered in
us a desire to
tell the untold
history of Paisley and search for a narrative thread that will drive the design.
The project is bigger than the building itself and I am excited to re-imagine the
relationship between the street and museum. This is not only about fi nding the
way to best show the museum’s collection, it’s also about showing the world
how an ambitious cultural project can have a profound impact on a community
and its identity.”
Cllr Lisa-Marie Hughes, chair of Renfrewshire Leisure - which operates the
museum - added: “For Paisley to have attracted a design team of such global
reputation to come to Scotland for the fi rst time shows we are being noticed
around the UK and abroad. Being the fi rst ever town on a UK City of Culture
shortlist took our profi le to new levels - but this appointment also says a lot
about the scale and ambition of the museum project, and the worldwide
importance of Paisley’s heritage and collections. The museum was gifted to
the people of Paisley more than a century ago by Peter Coats, at the time his
family were building a global thread empire headquartered right here.”
AL_A were among more than 120 fi rms to tender for the Paisley Museum
project and will lead an Anglo-Scottish multi-disciplinary design team including
conservation consultants Giles Quarme and Associates, landscape architects
GROSS.MAX, and engineers Arup.
They will also provide a wide range of benefi ts to the Renfrewshire community,
including further education and school visits, work experience placements and
careers events.
The £100m investment in Paisley town centre over the next four years also
includes projects to transform Paisley Town Hall and Arts Centre into 21stcentury
venues, a new learning and cultural hub on the High Street, major
investment in outdoor spaces and the town’s transport links, and new sporting
facilities and events space at St James Playing Fields.
The plans build on the investment already made in the publicly-accessible
museum store Paisley: The Secret Collection, opened last year on the town’s
High Street, and the launch of the new destination brand and website www.
paisley.is
The museum project is also being funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the
Scottish Government’s Regeneration Capital Grant Fund.
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