London architecture studio Feilden Fowles has revealed plans for a visitors’ centre with rammed-earth walls in Europe’s largest modern and contemporary sculpture park.
Set into a hillside in a former quarry, the new Yorkshire Sculpture Park visitors centre will include a restaurant, gallery, public foyer and shop.
Rammed-earth walls have been developed to complement the existing sandstone in the area. They will be employed for two of the primary external walls as properly as 1 side of the gallery.
“Rammed earth is picked to root the proposal in the landscape and quarry site employing excavated material to construct the building,” studio co-founder Fergus Feilden informed Dezeen. “The lengthy, blank east wall shields the glazed western elevation and terrace from the noisy M1 motorway.”
The 662-square-metre low-rise building will sit at the southern entrance to the park for guests arriving from the M1. A timber glazed screen will curve all around the west facade and the prepare is orientated so that it offers a shelter from the motorway and offer views out across the 202-hectare park, with a sunken south-west facing terrace.
The building’s internal climate is made to be as naturally managed as possible, with heavily insulated walls, a ground-sourced heat pump for scorching water and heating, and a roof planted with moorland species.
Bricks that have been air-dried rather of hardened in an oven – or “fired” – will be employed within the gallery to aid regulate the humidity. Unfired bricks are much more porous, making it possible for them to absorb more water from the air during periods of high humidity and release it when the problems alter.
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“The unfired brick lines the gallery and and varieties a network of air paths related to a hypocaust inside the walls,” explained Feilden, whose firm has lately finished work on a new showroom and offices for London watch brand Uniform Wares, and a school developing in Somerset influenced by ecclesiastical and monastic architecture.
“The use of unfired brick to regulate humidity is a sustainable, reduced-maintenance remedy which decreases operating costs,” extra Feilden. “Clare Lilley, director of programme, supports this approach and will programme the exhibitions to get account of much more variable situations.”
The gallery will also be distinguished from the rest of the area by a concrete sawtooth roof with translucent glass-reinforced plastic panels that will filter light to shield the artworks on present within.
It will host temporary exhibitions of perform by 20th- and 21st-century artists to complement the collection in the park’s outside area.
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The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is situated outside Wakefield, west Yorkshire, which is also home to the largest goal-created space for art in the Uk – the Hepworth Wakefield gallery designed by David Chipperfield.
Founded in 1977, the park occupies the estate of the 18th-century Bretton Hall and was the 1st of its kind in the Uk, as well as getting the biggest in Europe.
Its open-air gallery involves works by artists which includes Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and also hosts a short-term exhibitions programme. Final year, a gallery made by London architect Adam Khan for an exhibition of Roger Horn’s Seizure set up – designed by filling a council flat with liquid-copper sulphate to cover the surfaces with crystalline growths – was awarded a national prize by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
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Due for completion in 2017 to mark the park’s 40th anniversary, the visitors’ centre is component of a wider strategy to enhance its visitor numbers and earnings to aid counteract cuts in public funding.
Venture credits:
Architects: Feilden Fowles
Landscape architects: Jonathan Cook
Structural engineers: Jane Wernick Associates
Environmental engineers: Skelly & Sofa
