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O'Donnell & Tuomey's Photographers Gallery wins planning - images
4 December, 2007
Celebrated Dublin architect O’Donnell & Tuomey has received planning permission for its new £16 million building for the Photographers Gallery in London.
The six storey building, to be located in the heart of Soho off Oxford Street, will provide exhibition space, an online resource centre, education areas, a bookshop and a café and bar.
Located on a restricted site between two eight-storey buildings, the gallery boasts an unconventional form that aims to attract passers-by.
John Tuomey, partner at O’Donnell & Tuomey, said: “We wanted to draw people in from the hustle and bustle of Soho and Oxford street outside and then ensure that there is a gravitational pull upwards through the building.
“We wanted to avoid the feeling of everything being stacked up on separate floors. Instead everything hangs from the central core of the lift shaft from where people can see into every part of the gallery.”
Rooms will be organised in a spiral shape throughout the building, to reflect the interlocking and interdependent nature of each of their functions, the practice said.
The façade of the gallery is a polished Venetian red plaster finish to reference the existing brick fabric of the area.
The project will be completed in 2010.
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Readers' comments
the development is definitely striking. it is designed with attraction in mind but if anything it provides an overpowering repulsion (in a magnetic sense). i have seen a similar overhang on Jervis Street in Dublin. the overhang particular to the gallery brings the development down to a more human scale, as it refuses to let people see the true height of the building from close up however this very feature is oppressive as it is a large mass of red tethering above you. it is angular and definitely reinforces an inhumane quality to the building language. in the Jervis Street example there is at least a glazed floor which projects light downwards to the street thereby expressing its hollow (light) nature. it reminds me of the 'borg cubes' from 'star trek next generation' which while having a certain aesthetic quality they represent a brutal force out to destroy and assimilate (brutalism?). as a composition it is a wonderful interplay of mass and negative space interlocked around the spiral concept. but again is this appropriate to a more intimate setting? the borg had the good grace to leave their craft in outer space where it had ample context and scale. to be fair the design accords for this huge massy overhang by ensuring that there are nice timber glazed screens with textured panels at street level but does this do enough ? (i'm undecided) the end user- the book purchaser- will need to feel attraction. already books have an aura of intellectualism without ordinary joe feeling that he has no right to enter this prescient brutal intellectual mass.