Hasta La Ideas

Here are the latest images of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ extension to the British Museum in London, set to complete early next year.

Currently under construction in the north-west corner of the British Museum‘s Bloomsbury quadrangle, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre will provide new galleries, storage facilites and conservation studios within a nine-storey structure conceived as a cluster of pavilions.

Referencing both the nineteenth and twentieth century architecture of the museum, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners designed a steel-framed building clad with a mixture of stone and glass. The height of the roof will align with the eaves of the existing building, while three of the storeys are to be buried underground.

The Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery will occupy the ground floor of the new building and will be accessed via the north side of the Norman Foster-designed Great Court. The column-free rectangular gallery will feature a large door to allow access for larger exhibits, as well as a series of floor-to-ceiling windows that can be easily screened to protect light-sensitive objects. The space could also be subdivided to house smaller exhibitions.

Other floors of the building will be dedicated to conservation of the museum’s collection. The uppermost floor will contain top-lit studios for working with smaller artefacts, such as metal, glass or ceramic objects, while additional laboratories and offices will surround a two-storey atrium in the lower levels of the building and will be used for examining larger objects.

The three basement floors will function as a storage and lending hub for over 200,000 items. Each floor will contain a study room, plus a 16-metre truck lift will allow items to be transported in and out of the building.

“The World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre represents a vitally important combination of a purpose-built exhibition gallery and a celebration of the amazing behind-the-scenes activities,” said architect Graham Stirk. “These facilities will be contained in a bespoke twenty-first century building that provides the next stage of the museum’s evolution.”

The World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre will complete in March 2014 and the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery is scheduled to open with an exhibition dedicated to the Vikings.

London firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is led by Richard Rogers in partnership with Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour. Other recent projects by the firm in London include the NEO Bankside apartment blocks beside the Tate Modern art gallery and a fabric walkway over the roof of the O2 Arena. See more architecture by RSHP on Dezeen.

Here’s an update from the British Museum:

British Museum celebrates progress on the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre development

With less than a year to go until the first exhibition opens in the new exhibitions gallery, the British Museum today reveals the extent of progress on the construction of its new capital project, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre (WCEC). Designed by Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and constructed by Mace, the new Centre will cement the British Museum’s reputation as a world leader in the exhibition, conservation, examination and analysis of cultural objects from across the globe. The WCEC will enable the Museum to build on current successes, to store, conserve, study and display the collection for the future.

Located in the north-west corner of the Museum’s Bloomsbury estate, the WCEC is one of the largest redevelopment projects in the Museum’s 260 year history. The Centre will provide a new public exhibitions gallery, state-of-the-art laboratories and studios, world class stores for the collection, as well as facilities to support an extensive UK and international loan programme. This will rationalise and greatly improve the Museum’s operations on-site, and modernise facilities ‘behind the scenes’. These will allow the Museum to extend support to our UK and International partners in terms of increasing capacity for staff training and joint projects.

The building consists of five pavilions (one of which is sunk into the ground) and the design is sensitive to the British Museum’s existing architecture, connecting to the historic building whilst maintaining its own identity. The exhibitions gallery is due to open in early March 2014 with a new exhibition devoted to the Vikings (supported by BP). It is anticipated the conservation studios, science laboratories, loans hub and stores will be fitted out and occupied by summer 2014.

The total cost of the project is £135 million. The Linbury Trust, established by John Sainsbury (Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover KG), and the Monument Trust, established by Simon Sainsbury have together committed £25 million towards the project, one of the largest gifts to the arts in the UK in recent decades, which will be used to fund the exhibition gallery. The Heritage Lottery Fund has committed £10 million towards the project. Other significant benefactors include the Wolfson Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation and the family of Constantine Leventis, the Clothworkers’ Foundation, the Fidelity U.K. Foundation, Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement, the Band Trust and others as well as continued support from the Department for Culture Media and Sport (worth £22.5 million over 4 years). A fundraising campaign from the British Museum Members is underway.

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by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners appeared first on Dezeen.

London practice Allford Hall Monaghan Morris used pale brick walls, gabled roof profiles and domestic furniture to make this London hospice look like an oversized house (+ slideshow).

The North London Hospice was designed to provide support and treatment for patients with a life-limiting or terminal illness, within a less clinical environment than a hospital ward.

“We wanted to give the building a domestic quality,” AHMM‘s Paul Monaghan told Dezeen. “This is a healthcare building that does not feel institutional or clinical. And this was the aspiration, that people feel at home in this building.”

The architects added a pale brick to give a uniform appearance to the exterior walls. “Brick, of course, has strong associations with the idea of a home,” added Monaghan. “Its use also enabled us to blend in with the adjacent suburban semi-detached houses, although its lighter tone was intended to subtly highlight the building’s public nature.”

The main volume of the structure comprises two prominent gables, both three storeys in height, while a single-storey extension accommodates extra rooms at the rear and frames a south-facing courtyard.

Visitors arrive through an entrance on the eastern facade. There’s no reception, to avoid the feel of an institution, so this route leads directly to an informal lounge at the heart of the building.

From here, visitors can walk through to a daycare room at the back of the building, or find their way to treatment rooms on either of the two lower floors.

A kitchen and dining room is located within the second gable on the western side of the building and opens out to the private courtyard.

North London Hospice is the latest in a string of domestic buildings designed for patient care, following a number of Maggie’s cancer-care centres to complete in recent years. See more stories about healthcare buildings.

Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is best-known for its Stirling Prize-nominated Angel Building and Westminster Academy, also both in London. See more London architecture on Dezeen.

Photography is by Tim Soar.

Here’s a project description from AHMM:

North London Hospice

The North London Hospice provides a new uplifting base for the North London Hospice charity that incorporates a range of new services and encourages patients to drop-in for a chat, join in creative therapies, undergo treatments or simply relieve their carers.

Completed in May 2012, the building fulfils the aspiration to increase the provision of palliative care in Enfield in a contemporary, beautiful and non-clinical environment. Over the course of three years the client, architect, design team and user group worked closely to develop a brief and building that meets and exceeds patient needs by creating a special place for them in the heart of their community.

Set in a suburban residential area of north London, the building form is that of an overscale house – utilising pitched roofs and traditional brick construction. Located on a prominent corner, the two north facing gables form the main accommodation linked by circulation spaces and a single storey extension to the rear.

A generous entrance canopy receives visitors into a meet-and-greet space, leading through to a large multi-purpose daycare room and open plan kitchen and café area which frame a south facing courtyard. Smaller rooms for creative therapies, a hairdresser, and rest room support the key ground floor spaces. The first floor houses clinical, interview and teaching activities, with the pitched second floor providing flexible administrative facilities. All the upper rooms have generous views overlooking allotments to the south and playing fields to the north.

It was important to both the client and architect that the building felt light and airy and created a domestic sense of wellbeing so as to avoid any negative institutional connotations. The simple palette of brick and timber and muted colours all contribute to a calm and gentle environment for patients and carers.

Client: North London Hospice
Client Representative: Procore Project Solutions Ltd
Architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
Main Contractor: Pavehall Plc

Landscape Architect: BB UK
Quantity Surveyor: Equals Cost Consultancy
Structural/Civil Engineer: Elliott Wood Partnership LLP
Services Engineer: Atelier Ten

CDM Coordinator: Total CDM
Landscape Contractor: Gavin Jones Group
Acoustic Consultant: Paul Gillieron Acoustic Design
Ecological Consultant: John Wenman Ecological Consultancy LLP
Highways/Traffic Consultants: JMP Consultants
Approved Inspector: Guy Shattock Associates

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Allford Hall Monaghan Morris appeared first on Dezeen.

Appelée sobrement « Cloud I Meteoros », cette superbe sculpture pensée par le studio Ora composé de Lucy et Jorge Orta a été installée à la station de train St Pancras à Londres. Permettant d’apporter un peu de poésie et de rêverie aux voyageurs, cette création est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article en images.

Déjà nominé dans la catégorie Movie des Fubiz Awards 2013 pour son film « The Pleasure Of », Vitùc nous propose sa dernière création appelée « Keep Left », résumant avec une vidéo en noir & blanc de toute beauté son voyage de 3 jours à travers Londres. A découvrir dans la suite de l’article en vidéo.

by Sabine Zetteler Anna Murray and Grace Winteringham comprise Patternity, the two-person powerhouse consulting on pattern-inspired projects of various scale all around the world. After meeting through mutual friends they quickly realized that despite their seemingly…

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