46


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Before renovation work began in 2009, all the main gallery


spaces were located in the west wing, while antiquities stores, administrative areas and a ground floor public café were situated in the east wing. This layout didn’t work for the gallery at all, explains Justin


Fenton, project architect at Page \ Park: “For the first hundred years of its existence, the Portrait Gallery had shared the build- ing with a number of learned societies, all of which have now left for other permanent locations. To a large extent, nothing was done with the spaces they left behind, or they were simply used as storage. By removing the clutter we were able to open up new spaces... simultaneously, we wanted to peel back all the features that had been added in to the building’s detriment during the 20th century and let it breathe again,” he says. Many of the rooms in the east wing had been used for storage,


yet had the most potential as public galleries. On the second floor, for example, the rooms were tall and very light, thanks to the 1930s addition of a cranked beam roof with large roof lights. Conversely, second floor galleries on the west side had very


low 3-4m ceiling heights due to the erection of a solid false ceil- ing designed to conceal the trussed roof (another later addition) and a plethora of snaking pipes and ducts. The windows had also been blocked or partitioned off in an effort to shield paintings from daylight. “The largest gallery in the entire building is on the second floor,


but it had no natural daylight and the other galleries were very dark and dingy, with their windows covered over,” says BAM’s Thornton, whose team was tasked with removing the entire trussed roof and false ceiling to replace it with a vaulted roof with roof lights, similar in design to the roof on the east wing. Removing this huge, 30 m-long by 20 m-wide roof structure


Above and below: Many rooms previously used for storage had the most potential as gallery spaces, such as this second floor space in the west wing


was a major engineering challenge because it provided structural stability to the external walls, and if removed, there was a threat of collapse as the wall heads would be left exposed to Edinburgh’s windy conditions. It was also vital to keep the build- ing completely watertight and prevent water damage to several historic murals painted on the walls in the Main Hall, directly adjacent to the west wing galleries. Thornton explains the dilemma: “Many people would just


build a scaffold over the top of the roof and cover it with tarpau- lin, but we thought that this would still allow some rain water ingress and we had to ensure structural integrity.” The contractor’s solution was to erect a load-bearing birdcage


scaffold on the second floor, which was punched against the external walls to provide lateral restraint. Plywood decking was installed on top, sheeted with a self adhesive, heavy-duty vapour


continued on page 48


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