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museums and galleries
visually to mark the refurbished museum’s presence through strong sculptural form-making. The design has achieved prominence without overbearing the original Pump House building. The extension is unmistakably a new building yet it establishes a sympathetic relationship with the maturity of the Pump House through the tonality of the COR-ten rainscreen cladding and bold massing that echoes the industrial forms of the existing building. Project Partner, Chris Pritchett writes: This is our second cultural project in Manchester’s huge Spinningfield development area. Our previous scheme to ‘Unlock the Rylands’ saw the re-opening of Basil Champneys’ Neo-Gothic masterpiece in 2007 after a programme of sensitive repairs and alterations and the design of a new landmark entrance and archive building. The creation of the new People’s History Museum has shared many design challenges with the project to ‘Unlock the Rylands’ including a new ‘landmark’ extension, and, as at the Rylands, an important role for this new building was to re-invigorate the Client’s public presence in the city which again required balancing an appropriate level of assertiveness and personality with a sensitivity to the context of the existing historic building. The brief called for a new extension that would be welcoming and open enough to become the new entrance but that would also provide a series of ‘closed’ spaces for sensitive collections reducing the exclusion of daylight and close environmental control. Providing large windowless volumes in a prominent city context is always an architectural challenge, with tight city sites the most viable solution appears to be to push the big, closed volumes up into the air, leaving the ground floor available for entrance, circulation and amenity spaces which can be celebrated through highly glazed facades. This natural division of closed and open spaces seems to create naturally dramatic architectural compositions which perhaps achieve more visual impact than the building might otherwise deliver. At the People’s History Museum this effect is reinforced by a simple sculptural approach to the main volume of the building and a careful handling of external materials. The connectivity between new and old buildings is always important. The concourse linking new and old buildings is deliberately kept wide to preserve views into the historic building and the link is given drama through its double height space and high level linking bridge to provide a variety of routes and a sense of promenading through the building. The distinctive colour and texture of the Corten cladding was also chosen to reflect the Museum’s connection with Working People and the impact of industrialisation on the development of the county’s political history; as there is a deliberate element of narrative in the choice of the building’s façade treatment. The natural layer of oxidisation that forms on the steel’s surface also forms a suitably sympathetic foil to the red brick of the original Pumphouse, yet is rich enough to contrast with the predominantly silver and glass ‘corporate’ architecture that otherwise dominates Spinningfields. The new building is a strongly contextual response; it works with the much loved historic building to make a successful and sustainable museum; it dramatically reinforces the presence of the Museum in the city; it celebrates a key landmark site and riverside setting; it contributes to the commercial and cultural diversity of a new city quarter and the boldness of the building’s colour and form aims to reflect the independence and spirit of the people whose stories are told within the Museum. q
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