Dow Jones - Garden Museum

The following is a draft extract from my thesis commenting on the Garden Museum by Dow Jones. Alun Jones delivered a lecture on the 11th Nov and following exchange of e-mails I decided to visit and include the building within my thesis as an example of a hollistic insertion.

The following images are courtesy of Alun Jones, whilst at the museum I captured it using B&W film which is currently being processed.

Hollistic Insertion : Dow Jones, Garden Museum 

Dow Jones have created a particularly interesting insertion within a medieval church in Lambeth called St Mary’s. (Roberts, 1951) writes that the church is Grade 1* listed which is the most precious listing; this is due to the fact that the church was consecrated in 1197 and the medieval tower (built 1375) still survives today.  The body of the church was rebuilt in flint and stone and has been continually rebuilt with the latest rebuilt in 1851.

The church was threatened with closure and demolition to become a car park in the 1970’s when the building was saved due to the discovered of the 17^th century plant hunters, the John Tradescants. The building then became a museum and a church and the clash of building programme resulted in both struggling. The museum was simply boards on wheels, which would be pushed to the side to allow a service to take place.

The museum decided to induce a competition between 6 Architects in 2007 with Dow Jones winning. Wheras the other architects attempted to allow the museum to function alongside the church but restricting the exhibitions to being within mostly pod like structures, which were disjointed with the museum, Dow Jones took a different approach.

Their proposal started from a conceptual basis and revolved around disassociating the church from its original use. This would allow the building to be celebrated as a museum as opposed to struggling alongside the church. The practice approached the museum as a ‘hollistic intertion’ from a conceptual basis.

The concept was formed from the new imposed narrative, which would be used to rewrite the building function using the intervention. The concept was to form a Belvedere within the church. A Belvedere is described by (Roth, 1993) as an architectural structure, which is cited to take advantage of a fine view.  Shown in the image below is the concept image Alun Jones used in a lecture on 11^th Nov 2010 to describe his concept.

The idea was to create a landscape within the church which had a modern feel to it, but which also created a platform from which a commanding view could be given. This idea is analogous to the imposed function of the museum upon the church and represents the morphosis from church to dedicated museum. This idea of creating a Belvedere within the church allows visitors to appreciate the building in a way which was not previously possible, thus evoking a new emotive space from the old.

The intervention itself had certain parameters, as the building is Grade 1* listed it could not touch the columns so would have to be self supporting. The intervention material chosen was Eurban cross laminated timber panels which was partially a result of the need to erect cheaply and quickly, but it was also a response to the existing timber floor which was installed 10 years previously.

The timber insertion gains its form from an interaction with the Victorian columns in the nave, the panels are used to wrap and intertwine within the building. The distorted shape of the intervention is a reflection on the strange geometry contained within the church as the columns in the nave are slightly offset. The insertion creates dialogue with the columns by wrapping, opening up and repelling against the columns.

This insertion is exemplar of the idea of placing a holistic insertion within a building, then responding to the building to further the dialogue of the insertion.

The tectonics of the insertion are paramount to creating a poetic space, on the opening night Alun Jones (2010) commented that people who had been using the building for 20-30 years suddenly noticed the texture and the colour of the limestone columns when the cross lam panels were placed behind.

With the timber insertion came another intervention using artificial light. Lighting is used to celebrate the timber structure but the lights are placed on the panels to also celebrate the columns.

The insertion is highly successful and is being used as an exemplar way of interacting with an existing building by English Heritage. The space created is that of a poetic disassociated space.