For my architectural article in The Critic this month (see below), I have written about the newly refurbished Warburg Institute which I think is a model of good practice in the renovation of a recent building. Please note Marks & Spencer (and, indeed, hundreds of other buildings of the recent past). It can be done. What Haworth Tompkins have done in a totally admirable way is to immerse themselves in the building’s and the institution’s history and then have done everything to restore it, but in the spirit of the original, so that it is now more like what it was planned to be than it had become owing to changes over the years: a great achievement.
It also feels more welcoming.
The story used to be told of how Kenneth Clark arrived one day to use the photo library and was turned away because he didn’t have a library card. It may be apocryphal, but represented an ethos of wilful high-mindedness which was in some ways admirable, but not necessarily in the Institute’s long-term best interests.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 