South London Gallery 2006-10
The expansion of the South London Gallery designed by
6a Architects has just been completed to provide new gallery spaces,
a café, a flat for an artist in residence and a new education
building.
The original top lit gallery is one of the finest art
spaces in London. The special character of the building has long
inspired artists and has played a vital role in forming the SLG’s
international reputation for shows by contemporary British artists such as Ryan
Gander, Steve McQueen, Eva Rothschild and, most recently, Michael
Landy, alongside those by internationally established figures such as
Chris Burden and Alfredo Jaar.
The extension to the gallery is made of three
interventions dispersed around an expanded site. Firstly, the neighbouring
derelict house at no 67 has been refurbished to create a café on the
ground floor, exhibition spaces on the first floor and a flat for an
artist-inresidence on the second. The new spaces follow the arrangement
of the original front and back rooms but the
architectural language is abstracted and reduced like a image faded through
time. Behind the house a three-storey extension has been built to
create a double height room leading to a link back to the gallery and,
through the new Fox Garden to the Clore Education Studio.
Clore Education Studio - At the rear of the site, 6a has designed a new
education building on the footprint of the original lecture theatre which
was destroyed after World War II. Two surviving brick walls provided
the natural start for the building which links the Fox Garden on
one side and the gallery’s garden on the other. Continuing the
architectural tradition established by the original buildings, the
Clore Studio is a generous single volume topped by a central lantern and
also develops themes from the house with exposed roof structure to
create calmness and warmth. Like so much at the South London Gallery,
the overall simplicity of the space hides some surprise; the west
wall pivots to open a continuous field between the back garden and
the interior. At night the walls and shutters close the whole building
down into an abstract dark box.