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Monday, 3 October 2011

The Hepworth, Wakefield - Materials, design and lighting notes


-          The form of the building comprises ten intersecting trapezoidal pre-cast concrete volumes.
-          Building consists of ten gallery spaces, an auditorium, archive cafe and shop.
-          All of these areas are clad with a load-bearing facade of pigmented in-situ cast concrete.
-          The roof completes the unified look of the building, treated with a grey concrete application to complete the monolithic (formed of single large blocks of stone) form.
-          The gallery was designed to stand partially on the river facing a nearby weir and act as a flood defence.
-          The gallery has self compacting concrete perimeter walls, thick and strongly reinforced.



Lighting

-          David Chipperfield (architect) decided not to light all the rooms with daylight because for such a large museum, that would be quite complex.
-          He suggested that light was brought in from higher up in the room, where it would cause less damage to the artefacts.
-          Light was brought in through slots in the pitched ceilings of the galleries. This gives a sense of changing atmosphere.
-          The windows were used purely for the views.





Materials/Design

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