Richard Pain argues that proposed amendments to the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing should take heed of the building’s intrinsic qualities, as well as Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s sophisticated, spirited design.

Buildings.

Located on the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square, the Grade I listed Sainsbury Wing is locked into its site and into the circulation patterns of the adjacent National Gallery. (Credit: Matt Wargo)

Words
Richard Pain
CGIs
Selldorf Architects

 

Buildings with longevity, such as museums, art galleries, institutions and educational establishments, are destined to be adapted over their lifetime. They are likely to be extended again and again. More so, now that we are finally beginning to consider sustainability and moving away from demolition as a first option. Should the new work continue the conversation or interject with a new idea?

David Chipperfield gloriously retained the troubled history of the Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island in 2009 and one could say that John Pawson and OMA perhaps less successfully retained the qualities of the Commonwealth Institute in the Design Museum revamp of 2016.

In designing the extension to London’s National Gallery on Trafalgar Square, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown understood the original building and chose to comment on it. The result, completed in 1991, is the Grade I listed Sainsbury Wing, a mannerist delight that is due to be updated to coincide with the gallery’s 200th anniversary.

Located at the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square, the Sainsbury Wing is locked into its site, and into the circulation patterns of the existing building, while also maintaining a pedestrian route to Leicester Square. From the square, most people wouldn’t notice it. Its architectural vocabulary appears the same as its neighbours albeit the grammar is sophisticated: wholly radical yet also so conservative. Its subtle joy slips effortlessly into one’s consciousness. Its genesis was at times troubled and decisions were made that almost led to the designers quitting the project, so it is a blessing that it managed to be completed almost unscathed.

Buildings.

External amendments proposed by Selldorf Architects include changing the glazing from brown to clear, and introducing new lettering on the entrance façade.

The scheme follows themes that thread through much of Venturi Scott Brown’s work:

Entrance – well defined and readable, the start of a rich Beaux Arts sequence that welcomes, reorientates and directs visitors towards the galleries. One enters through the solid base of the façade, as in a Florentine palazzo, through an inconguously large opening designed to be seen across Trafalgar Square.

Inflection – the façade addresses Trafalgar Square on the diagonal and mediates between the square and Pall Mall. The Corinthian order proceeding from the main gallery building slides to a halt as the clubland elevation wraps around the corner, and one lone column manages to slip by.

Layering and scale – the scale changes from large to small from outside to inside.

Anticipation – inside one feels the weight of the building above, expressed through the serried ranks of large columns, some stretched in plan. There are more columns than modern structural necessity requires, but their large, stone presence amplifies the weight of the galleries above and reinforces the sense that this is an ante-space, a place to pause; to prepare for the joys to come.

Ampetheatre

Substantial masonry columns visually amplify the weight of the galleries above, reinforcing the notion of entrance as ante-space where visitors can pause and prepare for the artistic joys to come. (Photograph by Phil Starling)

Procession – the compression of the entrance hall gives way to the release of the main stair. The visitor ascends between the stone façade of the main galleries and the Miesian curtain wall to join the circulation from the parent building. Here, turning, one glimpses Cima’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas through the false perspective of reducing arches. Finally, one turns once more to align with the main suite of gallery rooms, whose terminus was to have been a window – lost during committee albeit its structural opening exists – through which one could re-orientate oneself to Pall Mall, looking over the restaurant below. It would be lovely to see that window reinstated.

The proposed Selldorf Architects alterations, glimpsed through a slow drip feed of glossy perspectives, show little understanding of, and certainly no love for, this building.

Providing the art is not compromised, changing the glass from brown to clear is cautiously welcomed. The original intention was to lower the light levels in the entrance sequence so that one’s eyes became adjusted prior to viewing the artworks in the brighter galleries. New glass technology, 30-odd years later, might be able provide an apparently brighter ambience whilst actually preparing the visitor for the treasures upstairs. Welcome, too, is the removal of those wretched steel banner pylons.

But the proposed new lettering to the entrance facade is timid, in the wrong place, and should be twice the size. As Bob Venturi said, big scale is good, small scale is good but middle scale stinks. The rendering of the exterior with the neat little glazing mullions and transoms of the main stair wall is way too prim. These are bold chunky mullions and transoms of varying thicknesses and tone, strikingly complex and wholly, brilliantly contradictory to the space in which they find themselves.

Selldorf Architects’ proposed double-height entrance void removes the sense of compression and anticipation provided by the existing lobby design

The renders suggest that several of the columns in the entrance hall are to be removed, their stone dressings stripped and circular timber column casings applied, losing their intentionally heavy masonry robustness and their directional power.

The proposed double-height entrance void, created by cutting the mezzanine away in a sinuous curve, removes the sense of compression and anticipation before the exhilarating release of the grand staircase and takes away one of the best locations to view London through this stratified facade. Cutting away portions of the fine stonework façade to the main stair and creating a bright and airy entrance hall is deeply regrettable. Like a child that can’t wait for pudding, the visitor is deprived of any sense of anticipation and left feeling bilious.

Selldorf Architects comes with previous; its major extension works to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego at La Jolla, completed earlier this year, stripped away a locally much-loved Venturi Scott Brown colonnade, truncated the adjacent façade, and re-orientated the entrance to an anonymous rank of metal doors.

Venturi Scott Brown buildings are often adaptable lofts, rich in meaning and texture and able to adapt to changing needs. But let’s not forget this building is Grade I listed and any change must retain and enhance the original. Learn from Bob and Denise. Be bold, but be good.