The Youth Studio is a collaborative space for young adults for study days and projects
CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER
Creating a “home for the incurably curious” inspired the Wellcome Collection’s new look, as Wilkinson Eyre’s director Paul Baker explains
Can you describe your design? It’s a refurbishment of the existing 1930s building. It transforms the main entrance and creates a new spiral staircase to encourage circulation. There’s also increased exhibition space, a destination restaurant, new youth events space, collaborative working space and an improved research library. Our focus was on opening up the building. The main problem the Wellcome Collection had was that a lot of people went to the ground fl oor, which has a very successful café and a temporary exhibition space, but they didn’t venture any further. The new design is primarily to encourage people to visit more of the building and explore the amazing facilities and exhibitions contained within.
©CYBERTREK 2015 AM 2 2015
awareness of the collection, the research and the facilities.
What was your inspiration? In 2007, the collection was re-launched as a home for the incurably curious, which is a concept that really intrigued us – it inspired a lot of the work. We’ve made it more
accessible and raised public
What was the brief? The brief was to accommodate the increasing visitor numbers. We’ve created a vertical circulation route that brings people into the building and opens it up a lot more. The spiral staircase encourages better circulation between the fl oors, inviting visitors to the refurbished Research Library, existing and new gallery spaces and new restaurant. People should be excited about venturing upstairs – it should intrigue the incurably curious.
How do you expand a building without increasing its size? Much of its expansion was made possible through the change in use. The building was
built in 1932 to house Henry Wellcome’s collection and primarily comprised laboratory and research spaces. It’s since become a public building so we’ve reimagined the spaces to be more exciting and more effi cient.
How have you changed the entrance? Before the redevelopment the entrance space was very exposed, as the sliding glass doors were constantly open with frequent people movement. The lobby was very cold, or wasteful of heat, and it was noisy as it opens onto Euston Road. We introduced two revolving doors either side of the main entrance to solve the environmental problems and presents a more approachable and better proportioned facade. ●
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