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British Museum reveals its £135m extension
Norrman Lebrecht and Rowan Moore01.04.09
The British Museum is planning to build a £135million extension to display blockbuster exhibitions, the Evening Standard has learned.
Under designs drawn up by Lord Rogers's architecture firm, the museum will build three pavilions on seven levels. This will create 1,100 square metres of gallery space to hold shows such as China's First Emperor and Hadrian's Empire And Conflict.
The plan will be submitted to Camden council within the next two weeks and museum director Neil MacGregor has revealed that two-thirds of the funding has already been found.
At least £22.5million has been pledged by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport while an anonymous donor is believed to have made one of the largest ever private donations to a museum.
Mr MacGregor said he is confident he will raise the remaining £45million. "We're very hopeful that people will want to join in because this is about the protection of the cultural patrimony of the world," he said.
Visitors to the new pavilions will see "ghostly activity" through cast glass walls that will give a mottled, semi-transparent effect.
Graham Stirk, the architect in charge of the project, says that the building "will change its moods" in different light. The plans, the most dramatic since the creation of the Great Court in 2000, and the greatest extension to the museum for almost a century, include conservation workshops, and a lift capable of bringing large trucks loaded with objects into underground storage areas.
It will entail the demolition of two reproduction Georgian houses, built in the Seventies, on Montague Place. Some conservationists have criticised this but English Heritage say the plans are a "first class architectural response" to a "sensitive setting" although there "remain areas of detailed design" they will discuss.
The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment also supports the scheme. The expansion is designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, the practice led by Lord Rogers of Riverside. Lord Rogers made his name with the Pompidou Centre in Paris in the Seventies, and this will be his practice's first completed museum or gallery since then. The museum says it is continuing a tradition of "always working with the greatest architects", which goes back to its original architect Sir Robert Smirke and includes Lord Foster, who designed the Great Court.
The model of the proposed building will go on public display at the British Museum this Friday. It is hoped the project will be completed by 2012.
The scheme will raise again the question of what to do with the famous circular Reading Room at the centre of the museum, which has been underused since the British Library moved to Euston Road.
The Reading Room is currently adapted for temporary exhibitions, but these will be housed in the new building. The British Museum admits it does not know what to do with the room, and is open to suggestions.
Reader views (8)
Mistertea - the British Library is opening a huge new repository near Boston Spa so it doesn't need any more space.
It would be wonderful however to use the reading room as a new central public reference library for London, which we lack. It would need a fair bit of investment though - and libraries are unfortunately low down the political agenda and heading south. I can't see it getting any government funding, especially in the new 'age of austerity', so it would need a big public fundraising effort.
- Ian, London
The proposed extension is just a large glass box. It may have technical wizardry within, but from the exterior it has no architectural merit. It could be an office block in any city in the world. Surely the BM deserves rather more style?
- Paul Mc Donald, London UK
Fantastic news!
- Anna Lottis, London, UK
It is in danger of losing its identity. It is too big for comfort - maybe it will become a dinosaur?
- Vicki Fox, London
. The museum says it is continuing a tradition of "always working with the greatest architects", ..
Aliter,'All the jobs go to the same old gang'. Why new space when there's unused space already which the BM doesn't know how to use, plus understaffing as pointed out above? Where will the funding come from for staffing this new space?
This probably made sense a year or two ago, but we're in a different world now.
- Mdj E10, london uk
The Reading Room can become a branch of the British Library, maybe for magazines or some other specific area of publishing. The vaults of the new BL will soon overflow (I have worked there) and the Boston Spa depositary has already admitted throwing some valuable stuff away, so we must use all the space we have.
- Mistertea, London
The BM doesn't have enough staff to keep open what it has. I can't remember the last time the Greek and Roman sculpture galleries in the basement were open.
- Roy, England
The central library, the reading room, was just fine as a central library and reading room.
- Stephen, London
