wool are placed on the ceiling, and the floor is a pale, wood-toned Marmoleum. ‘We wanted to create something that wasn’t a blank canvas, but had personality,’ says Mooney. Sillars seems to have got his wish, for this workshop to be: ‘A space as suitable for making as thinking.’ On the opposite side of the second floor lift/stair lobby we are shown vastly improved staff accommodation, which begins with a new, comfortable staff lounge featuring kitchenette, soft seating and shelving for some of the institute’s vintage sculpture and art magazines. Te offices beyond have been updated and upgraded. Previously three cellular rooms off a corridor, with staff toilets at the back, they now comprise two much larger, open-plan rooms with no corridor but circulation channelled via openings either side of the intervening wall. Attractive green/grey Cradle to Cradle carpeting adds to the feeling of


quasi-domestic comfort, as do the wide, generous windows and soft-toned LED lighting. To the left of the second office are bookable, private meeting rooms, with a timber and glazed screen repurposed from the library foyer below to create a semi-transparent wall for the larger meeting room. Says Mooney: ‘Everything we can re-use we have re-used.’ Tat includes additional bookshelves from the library, which now slot in opposite an existing wall of shelves along the meeting room passageway. Te seminar room in the basement is now an ideal space for medium-sized gatherings or screenings. Tree top windows that had been covered up on the street side have been revealed, bringing welcome shafts of daylight into a basement space. Te same grey-flecked, green carpeting as used in the staff quarters is deployed here to unify the whole building’s presentation. A very Henry Moore-ish, mid-century, sage


green paint features on seminar room walls and also on the doors of the adjacent and updated, fully accessible toilet cubicles.


Tere are other, subtle but significant changes on the ground floor, beyond the refurbished foyer: a smaller break-out space for drop-in activities in the corridor and now great visibility through to the archive gallery beyond it, thanks to a wide, glazed doorway. Environmental improvements include an upgrade of the roof, which has been re-tiled, and now features photovoltaic panels, which are predicted to save 13,000t of carbon over their life span. New heating, lighting and ventilation systems will improve both energy efficiency and comfort. With some deft moves, made for all the right reasons, it feels like Group Ginger has given a significant boost to Leeds’ contemporary art ecology, encouraging learners, thinkers and makers of all ages.


ALL IMAGES: RICHARD CHIVERS


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