Jonathan Tuckey Design creates a diminutive double-height gallery within a west London mews house

Photos
James Brittain

Commissioning Jonathan Tuckey Design to renovate a small house on a busy mews in west London, artists Rob and Nick Carter prepared a brief that incorporated a series of private exhibition spaces within the small building alongside domestic spaces, and requested that the comprehensive reconfiguration should also retain a strong sense of the building’s existing character.

Exterior and site plan

“The project could be seen as a small yet notable addition to the canon of ‘houses designed for artists’,” says the architect. “Historically, there lies a connection between the different yet inextricably linked practices of designer and artist, this collaboration has often manifested physically and conceptually in the idea of the house”.

Plans and views of existing building

Dividing such precedents into two distinct types – ‘Houses for Practice’ and ‘Houses for Display’ – the architects determined that the ‘Paddington Pantheon’ should take its place among the latter, “learning from the ancient tradition of the wunderkammer – cabinets of curiosity – or more explicitly, the private collection”. As well as operating as a showcase for the work of the artists, the house also serves as “a way for them to visually discuss, preserve, interpret, and commune with, archetypes, traditions, genres, and methods”.

Illustrated section; top-lit lower floor of the gallery

“A useful programmatic basis for the design came from the Pinacotheca, the area of the Greco-Roman home that acted as a picture gallery”, says the architect. “The Pantheon  – from which the project borrows its name – is formally significant due to the oculus that crowns its domed roof. Through the inclusion of a skylight, penetration of light through a celestial aperture is mimicked as a device”.

In part reflecting the influence of the ‘skyspaces’ created by artist James Turrell, this opening takes the form of a skylight within prismatic roof-form over the gallery, contorted away from the orientation of the plan towards the passage of the sun.

The importance of light in the gallery is not just architecturally useful, but also “speaks directly to the methods and medium of practice of the artists”, says the architect. “The dialectic between their artistic practice and installation space was paramount from the conception of the project. The spaces designed by the practice were influenced by the idea of creating an ideal scene from which to view their artworks”.

The choice of materials responds to the existing conditions found within the house, most notably stone and timber floors. White-painted walls provide a neutral background for the art to be displayed, but also emphasise the sculptural qualities of the spaces.

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