UK studio Caruso St John has produced Gagosian’s third and greatest gallery in London, featuring dark oak flooring and a glass ceiling, which opened ahead of this week’s Frieze artwork honest .
Photograph by Hélène Binet
The new gallery – the seventh room Caruso St John has created for the worldwide art dealership – is found on Grosvenor Hill in Mayfair, on what was previously a total city block occupied by a Brutalist 1960s advancement.
The growth consisted of a residential tower and a two-storey workplace creating with parking beneath. Despite appearing like a new freestanding constructing, the 180-square-metre gallery is constructed using the skeleton of the office developing.
Photograph by Hélène Binet
“What the task did was to demolish the structure of the office building back to the perimeter columns and some of the authentic roof beams, took out the floor, stiffened the framework to make this room,” architect Peter St John informed Dezeen. “So primarily it’s the exact same form as the building that employed to be here, outside, and within is completely various.”
Connected story: Tate Britain Millbank renovation by Caruso St John completed
Caruso St John’s interior features two double-height gallery spaces and two smaller connecting places, with large openings in amongst. The gallery was designed to give Gagosian the versatility to demonstrate a selection of various performs.
Photograph by Hélène Binet
“We required more versatility to make plenty of distinct exhibitions,” gallery director Gary Waterston told Dezeen. “We tried to produce a room that was different, that wasn’t just concrete floor with exposed beams and fluorescent lighting, but anything a lot more of this neighbourhood.”
Caruso St John chose finish-grain dark oak block for the floor of the gallery. The blocks employed are extremely large in scale, so the growth rings of the wood are sparser and much more distinct.
Even though giving the impression of daylight, the glass ceiling in the gallery spaces is made up of artificial lower light, which evenly illuminates the room employing fairly small power and with out making heat.
Photograph by Hélène Binet
“There’s a cavity behind the glass the depth of the steel framework in which there’s an array of extremely closely spaced LED lights, which are the two warm and cool bulbs,” stated St John. “We can fluctuate the colour of the light to match the colour of the light of the sky. It can actually relate to whether there is a cloud over the developing, which is amazing.”
A number of practically-full-height windows bring a lot more daylight into the white gallery spaces, although a black steel-framed door marks the entrance.
“Within the evident confines of designing versatile spaces, you try to steer clear of the banal specifics and abrupt experience of artwork that is the regular way in a business gallery,” St John informed Dezeen. “The new Mayfair gallery is more refined, it has a stunning dark timber floor and a glass ceiling, like a museum. It really is not like a loft or an industrial building.”
The back-of-property room is found through a hidden door and up a staircase. It has a greater floor room than the galleries themselves and consists of offices, a wooden library, an artwork retailer and viewing spaces to display clients artworks.
The exterior of the constructing was completed by London practice TateHindle for the Grosvenor Estate – who have leased the constructing to Gagosian for 20 years. The gallery is clad in handmade light-grey Roman bricks, which are longer and flatter than normal bricks.
Gagosian Grosevnor Hill is part of a cultural revival of the spot. Latest additions consist of the headquarters of Philips auction property, Sadie Coles gallery and style designer Hussein Chalayan’s 1st store.
Caruso St John has been functioning on Grosvenor Hill for 3 many years. It truly is completion coincides with the London gallery they designed for British artist Damien Hirst’s personal assortment, in a row of converted and extended theatre warehouses in Vauxhall.
The practice has created each Gagosian’s other galleries in London – Britannia Street and Davies Street – as nicely as outposts in Hong Kong, Rome and Paris.
“[Gagosian] trust us, that is the important issue,” explained St John. “There’s often uncertainty in working a practice, so we have been fortunate to have them as repeat consumers. They are the only ones!”
twenty Grovesnor Hill has opened with an exhibition of performs by American artist Cy Twombly, including two of his large-scale Bacchus paintings that have by no means been shown in public. Cy Twombly is open till 12 December 2015.
Frieze London will take spot in Regent’s Park from 14 to 17 October.
