May 12
Rick Mather Architects is working on a £61 million expansion and renovation of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
A new building will replace all the display facilities apart from the original, Grade I listed 1845 building designed by Charles Cockerell and will nearly double the amount of display space. It will comprise 39 new galleries, including four new temporary exhibition galleries, a new education centre, conservation studios, a walkthrough to the museum and the Casts Gallery, and Oxford’s first rooftop café.
Click on photos to enlarge and escape to exit
The project will also achieve high environmental standards by using displacement ventilation and locally sourced timber and stone.
Dr Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean, said the old building was cramped, had no environmental controls, made poor use of space, and had no dedicated educational facilities, disabled access or loading bays.
Rick Mather said the new building would address these shortcomings and allow for what Dr Brown called a ‘radical new way’ of presenting the exhibits, emphasising connections across cultures and time rather than separating displays into discrete departments.
Architects: Rick Mather
Location: Oxford
Type of project: Museum
Exhibition design: Metaphor
Client: Ashmolean Museum
Funding: Heritage Lottery Fund
Start on site date: 2006
Expected completion date: November 2009
Total cost: £61 million
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— AR2 Comments
Dustin wrote:
The open atrium is indicative of the Louvre, which is hugely prominent both in scale, beauty and art. Maybe this one is also emblematic of great.. or good museums.
Posted on May 12 2009 at 22:12
Nathaniel Foye wrote:
It never ceases to amaze me that England, which produced such marvelous architects as Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, today hires mediocrities like Rick Mather to enlarge its venerable institutions. His plan for the Ashmolean Museum extension is nothing but square footage infill punctured with windows of arbitrary placement and size — as the late architect Philip Johnson would say, “…a big window for the dog, a little window for the cat.”
Fortunately, the extension’s bulk is (for the most part) hidden behind older buildings. But it is a mystery why the Ashmolean’s director and trustees, ostensibly connoisseurs of British culture, could be so desperate for new amenities, and so lulled by the architect’s flattering proposal sketches, that they would accept another carbuncle.
Posted on Oct 02 2009 at 14:19
