BRIEF ENCOUNTERS


Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket gallery has doubled in size and potential, thanks to an ingenuous and inspired refurb and expansion by Reiach & Hall. Veronica Simpson finds client and architects in sync about what buildings for art really need


THE FRUITMARKET is one of Edinburgh’s best loved cultural landmarks. Adapted from a fruit and vegetable warehouse adjacent to Waverley Station originally built in 1938, the gallery has showcased contemporary art since 1974. Its simple, white cube presentation on Market Street, refurbished in 1994 by Richard Murphy Architects and costing around £350,000 in total, helped to further boost its audiences and reputation. But by 2003 it had outgrown that space and director Fiona Bradley was


recruited from London’s Hayward Gallery to mastermind the funding and design of a significant expansion. Nearly 20 years later, she is now presiding over a gallery that has doubled in size and grown even more in potential. Tat lengthy gestation implies a chequered history: indeed, an earlier, more ambitious £11m scheme by Gareth Hoskins Architects had to be aborted, in part due to withdrawal of HLF funding. But in the interim, an opportunity emerged to buy its next door neighbour – an


older warehouse, with its original structure almost entirely intact, despite housing various nightclubs and karaoke bars over the decades. And now the white spaces of the original gallery (albeit significantly but subtly refreshed) are complemented by a new, gritty, double-height gallery, all thanks to Edinburgh architects Reiach & Hall’s ingenuity. With sustainability and adaptability at the heart of the project, the new ‘warehouse’ space is a multi-functional companion to the original gallery, operating as


BROAD DAYLIGHT


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