Elephant West

Liddicoat & Goldhill has transformed a London petrol station into a creative arts space

Photos
Dirk Lindner

Designed by Liddicoat & Goldhill, Elephant West is conceived as a physical manifestation of the print and online visual-culture publication Elephant. Located in London’s White City, the project is conceived as a platform for emerging artistic talent and includes exhibition spaces, a cafe, bar and shop.

“Elephant’s tagline is ‘Life Through Art’, and in keeping with that, the work produced at Elephant West will resonate thematically with the concerns of the wider world, rather than the narrower interests of the ‘art world’”, explains Elephant’s creative director Robert Shore. “We wanted a design that would be both iconic and almost self-effacingly transparent, so that Elephant West would be a memorable space in its own right, but also readily and totally transformable by the artists we ask to take it over.”

The scheme occupies a former petrol station sited adjacent to Television Centre. “Our design exposes the latent architectural potential of a derelict, utilitarian building”, says the architect. “It also resurrects the foundation myth of White City, which gained its name from dozens of white-painted temporary pavilion-like structures built for the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition. The notion of the pavilion and the exotic underpins the design, where materials or lightweight structures are often considered foreigners, with indifferent relationships to their surroundings.”

Pixelated, 3.9-metre-long galvanised steel scaffold planks are used to clad the building, dissolving its form and presenting a monolithic, inscrutable face to Wood Lane. Large industrial roller shutter doors simultaneously evoke monumentality and practicality.

Inside, subtle and playful references are made to building’s original function. The existing petrol pumps are sprayed white and enclosed behind four giant polycarbonate columns. Manhole covers, and concrete bollards are picked out in contrasting epoxy coatings.