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Opposite page The curvy seating is upholstered in a pale, pink fabric, while bespoke joinery on the walls displays the retail offer
Right, top and bottom The workshop is seen as key to changing visitor expectations, communicating the ambition for education and interaction
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
Strategic refurbishments are the unsung heroes of today’s responsible design community, eschewing eye- catching statement structures for improved circulation, decluttering and facility relocation. The results can be transformational, as Veronica Simpson finds in visiting the recently rebooted Henry Moore Institute
THE HENRY MOORE INSTITUTE (HMI) in Leeds is a cultural landmark, a place for world-class exhibitions of historic and contemporary sculpture. It is also very much a place for research, as anyone who has had the pleasure of working in its amply daylit Sculpture Research Library will know. Here, displayed on warm wood shelves, ranged from floor to ceiling along every solid wall, are 30,000 books on sculpture, many emanating from the original library with which Moore established his Henry Moore Foundation in 1977 – along with an extensive archive of sculptors’ drawings and papers – with the ambition of furthering the appreciation of sculpture and its practitioners. Tis is the first refurb that the HMI has enjoyed in the 31 years since it opened its dedicated space in 1993. It takes up one wing of a terrace of three Victorian merchants’ houses, all of it retrofitted by Dixon Jones, with Leeds Art
Gallery occupying the bulk of the terrace. Dixon Jones’ scheme very much followed the psychology of the times, elevating the institute with a bold entrance – a glass door with a long, gentle ramp leading up to an imposing reception foyer, dominated by a massive desk. Beyond that was – and still is – a trio of excellent exhibition spaces of varying scales, including one lofty, double-height gallery. But by tucking the scholarship and admin activity away in cellular spaces on the three other floors, accessed off multiple corridors, the building’s core activities felt somewhat out of bounds, inward- focused. It was definitely not communicating accessibility for all.
Tat atmosphere of introversion is completely reversed in a new scheme by Leeds- based architects Group Ginger. Te entrance remains the same but the bulky reception desk has been whisked away. Te main feature in
Left The Henry Moore Institute has undergone its first refurb since it opened its dedicated space in 1993
that same foyer is now a large and curvy, comfortable seating island, upholstered in a pale, pink fabric. ‘We want your encounter with our facilities to be as warm, welcoming and enriching as possible,’ says director of the institute, Laurence Sillars. Greeting visitors in this way ‘allows people to sit down and get settled while they decide where to start’, says Sillars. A small, free-standing reception desk is placed to the back of the foyer. Bespoke joinery on the walls displays the compact but expertly curated retail offer of art magazines, sculpture books, posters and pencils.
I ask Sillars how the brief evolved, and he says: ‘Te single most important thing was to find an architect that could understand us being fundamentally an organisation for academic appreciation and research around sculpture, but also the need to make this whole building as inviting and functional a space as possible.’ In Group Ginger, they have clearly lucked out. For project architect Samantha Mooney, the key move was changing the suggested location of the institute’s proposal of a new educational workshop – the first fully functional facility for workshops and teaching – from basement to second floor, where there was mostly staff accommodation. She says: ‘From talking to staff, it didn’t seem appropriate to put it downstairs. We were passionate about making this the gem of the building and reorganising the office spaces to enable this change.’ Group Ginger saw the workshop as key to changing visitor expectations, communicating the ambition for education and interaction. By placing it in a daylit former boardroom on the second floor – made substantially larger and dual-aspect thanks to the removal of a corridor – it becomes much more of a magnet. A dedicated break-out space has been created out of a former office to its rear. Acoustic panels of wood
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