Content area
Full text
Note: SentryGlas
MUMA's transformation of an existing lightwell is at the heart of its elegant new gallery space for the V&A, writes Amanda Birch
To describe the reworking of the Victoria & Albert Museum's Medieval & Renaissance galleries as simply a refurbishment project belies the breadth and intricacy of this meticulously detailed and visionary scheme.
The scheme, acclaimed by the V&A as "the biggest project the museum has undertaken since the British Galleries opened in 2001", has been designed by MUMA (McInnes Usher McKnight Architects). The nine-strong firm had previously created a new cafe for the museum, and has also undertaken schemes for the Newlyn Art Gallery and Penzance Gallery in Cornwall.
Its pounds 30 million, 4,500sq m reconfiguration of the museum's south-east quarter, where the original Aston Webb-designed galleries are located, has involved a fundamental rethink of the circulation routes and disabled access. The project has resulted in some major interventions, including the first new-build public space at the museum for more than 100 years.
The project could have been much smaller. When MUMA won the international competition in 2003, the V&A's brief was to design new exhibition space for the Medieval & Renaissance collection, which was dispersed mainly in the galleries around the inner garden. But following a site visit and the discovery of redundant space within an existing lightwell, MUMA proposed a much more ambitious scheme, which the museum backed.
To connect the perimeter galleries to the rest of the museum, make them more legible and allow for wheelchair access, MUMA boldly proposed the removal of a grade I-listed marble staircase. It was replaced with a glass lift and structural in-situ concrete stair with very thin landings, to create a vertical "circulation hub".
This intervention has created a daylit gallery incorporating a technically innovative pounds 1.1 million monopitch glazed roof, engineered by Dewhurst Macfarlane...