By an odd and fortunate coincidence, my copy of a new and excellent volume of essays about the work of Denise Scott Brown arrived last week just at the moment when I was considering the issues surrounding the original design of the Sainsbury Wing and the current proposals for its redesign by Annabelle Selldorf:-

To an extent I half knew, but only half, Scott Brown was heavily involved in teaching about issues of urban form during the mid-1960s, including courses on ‘Form, Forces and Function’ at the University of Pennsylvania in fall 1963 and fall 1964, and then, again, in the University of California Berkeley in spring 1965 and at University of California Los Angeles in fall 1966 where she was appointed as a professor. She was due to write a book on ‘Determinants of Urban Form’ for which she was given annual leave to write it in 1967, of which the manuscript survives but has never been published. It was then that she first formulated her view of the need for flexibility in architectural design, writing in the notes for her lectures how

City form tailored too specifically to the special needs of one population at one time may become functionally obsolete long before the end of its structural life, whereas form designed to suit ‘functions’ more generally defined may prove less efficient for any one specific need, but over the span of its structural life more useful to more people.[1]

This was when many of the ideas which appeared in Learning from Las Vegas were first formulated and indeed she took Robert Venturi to visit Las Vegas when he came out to stay with her in Los Angeles in November 1966 before they were married in July 1967 and taught a course together on Las Vegas at Yale in fall 1968.

Key to her thinking was the idea of the glove and the mitten, the glove being highly specific in the way that it allows patterns of use, whereas the mitten is more generous and less determined:-

I can see now why Annabelle Selldorf showed this image in her lecture about the Sainsbury Wing. She did not state it quite explicitly, but the issue is clearly whether one treats the Sainsbury Wing as a glove or a mitten. Should its use be precisely as it was when it first opened in 1991 or should its use be allowed to evolve to a limited extent in order to acknowledge the changing requirements of the client and changing attitudes towards public use ?

I can see the argument for retaining the absolute integrity of the Sainsbury Wing in its original form because of its exceptional historical importance; but I am not persuaded that modifying its entrance as is now proposed by Selldorf necessarily damages its essential integrity, particularly now that the modifications are being done in a style that is more in sympathy with the classical language of the original architectural forms and, indeed, the changes to the space immediately outside the Sainsbury Wing, which will be enlarged will, I think, enhance its public visibility and its relationship to Trafalgar Square.

The Sainsbury Wing is indisputably a work of exceptional architectural interest and importance. But upgrading and renovating its entrance, making it more spacious and getting rid of later irrelevant accretions, could be viewed as an act of homage to it, not an act of desecration.

[1] Denise Scott Brown, ‘The Definition of City Form: Form and the Designer’ cit. Denise Costanzo, ‘The Function of Functionalism’ in Frida Gahn (ed.), Denise Scott Brown:  In Other Eyes, Portraits of An Architect (Basel: Birkhauser, 2022), p.81.

I went to see the new back extension to Lea Bridge Library a week or so ago and have now spotted that Rowan Moore wrote about it at much greater length last Sunday, both of us admiring its calmness and civic values, a lightweight structure added behind an Edwardian public library for people to sit and work and have a cup of coffee.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/06/lea-bridge-library-pavilion-lending-new-life-organically-to-a-public-space?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I must say I was a tiny bit surprised that eight of the previous Presidents of the RIBA took it upon themselves to condemn the planned changes to the Sainsbury Wing, not least because I do not recall the architectural profession being especially protective of its merits in the past, not least, as it happens, the past Presidents of the RIBA, who turned down suggestions that Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown might be awarded its Gold Medal, which was proposed year after year during their time.

So, why the volte face ?

They can’t be especially well informed about what is currently proposed since I didn’t spot any of them at the lecture in which Annabelle Selldorf explained the detail of her latest plans – at a lecture at the RIBA.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/06/national-gallery-entrance-revamp-row-recalls-king-charles-carbuncle

We spent nearly half the day at the William Kentridge exhibition, with a break for lunch, which we found you need because of its intensity – the range of media, the use of film, the way it absorbs you into its world, both personal and political, which he seems to have managed to maintain at full blast into his sixties in spite of his fame, using the galleries of the RA very creatively, if a touch cacophonously in Gallery 3. It’s been a long time in the planning – he became an Hon. RA in December 2014 and I think the idea of the exhibition came soon thereafter. Quite an achievement, given that much of the work for it must have been done during lockdown, but then it has an air of work-in-progress, much to its benefit.

I have been thinking more about the issue of how important the entry to a museum is.

One of the things we had to do at the Museum Management Institute was to pick a museum we had never been to in San Francisco – easy for me as I had never been to any of them – and then describe everything about the experience of finding them/arriving/buying a ticket before the actual visit and how good or bad it was – in those days, mostly bad. It’s tricky once one is working in a museum to remember how off-putting they can be if you’ve never visited them. Hence, the focus on what the Sainsbury Wing looks like from outside, the metal gates, the scale of the urban/civic space between it and the Wilkins Building, what it looks like at night.

When we were first discussing the redesign of the Royal Academy, one of its most loyal donors said she always still found the courtyard a little bit off-putting as if she didn’t belong there. If she felt like that, what did everyone else feel ?

So, yes, the National Gallery is right to be paying attention to its entrance and what visitors feel.

I have been asked by Bendor Grosvenor if there is any evidence that people are influenced by whether or not they go to a museum by the character of the entrance (I know he thinks the National Gallery shouldn’t be spending money on its entrance).

This is not exactly an answer to his question – I believe the National Gallery has assembled evidence on attitudes (all negative) to the current experience of the entrance to the Sainsbury Wing – but I remember being told at the Museum Management Institute which I attended long ago (1991) that visitors make up their minds about whether or not they will like a museum within thirty seconds of crossing its threshold.

When writing my book about museums, I managed to find out the source for this from Phil Nowlen, the wise man and mentor who ran the course. It came apparently from a book by Christopher Lovelock called Services Marketing: People and Strategy, now in its eighth edition. I can’t say I’ve read the book, but it suggests that entrances do matter.

We went to the dress rehearsal of the new production of Alcina at the Royal Opera House. Opens Tuesday, a beautiful, lively, clever, if quirky production, directed by Richard Jones and designed by Antony McDonald. I couldn’t quite figure out what it would have been like when it opened as an opera at the recently built Theatre Royal in Covent Garden in April 1735, but it certainly is very enjoyable in 2022. I particularly liked the trees.

I have just been to the lecture which Annabelle Selldorf gave at the RIBA under the title ‘The Work We Do’, but essentially an opportunity for her to explain her thinking behind the changes she has proposed to the Sainsbury Wing, which she did extremely carefully and – to me at least – very persuasively.

Some initial thoughts:-

1. The original stepped entrance to the Wilkins Building is exceptionally inhospitable and was perhaps designed to be. There was a barracks just to the north of where the National Portrait Gallery now is from which troops could pour through the basement of the National Gallery to quell riots in Trafalgar Square. The original portico may have been designed to keep the public out, not to welcome them in. So, there is a logic, as Selldorf described, to making the Sainsbury Wing into the main entrance, not least for security purposes.

2. Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones proposed steps down from the Wilkins Portico as part of their work on the Wilkins Building, following the model of the steps which were added to the Metropolitan Museum in the mid-1960s. But this was not part of the brief to Selldorf and would probably encounter huge opposition.

3. The plans for subtly changing and enhancing the public space between the Sainsbury Wing and the Wilkins Building are exemplary, getting rid of the odd courtyard garden which was originally planned, I think, when the Keeper was resident in the south-west corner of the Wilkins Building.

4. The plans for the ground floor spaces in the Sainsbury Wing have evolved significantly. Instead of being designed as a contrast to the Venturi Scott Brown building, they have now been designed with much greater sympathy to Venturi Scott Brown’s original monumental vocabulary, including keeping their Egyptian columns, the same ceiling detailing and rustication. The original ground floor spaces were severely compromised by the bookshop and much extraneous clutter and it will be a great benefit that these spaces are cleaned up and restored to a version of their original appearance.

5. There is a great deal about the project which has not really appeared in the public domain, including a proper entrance from Trafalgar Square to new research facilities.

Over the summer, there has been much opposition to the scheme. I hope that the lecture will be published. It should be because it made so clear how much care and thought has gone into the scheme, including more effective illustrations than the hideous CGI which made the entrance look like an airport terminal.

I see that the Art Newspaper is reporting the availability of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for rent (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/11/01/everything-has-a-price-estate-agent-lists-historic-foundry-that-once-cast-big-bens-bells). It’s a wonderful site and I can see that it could potentially be turned into an art gallery. But I am still hoping that the relevant heritage agencies – most notably, Historic England, Tower Hamlets and the National Heritage Lottery Fund – will see the benefit in retaining its historic use which is at least as much a part of its historic interest as the building. There was a feeling from some of the heritage agencies that London did not need to protect a place of manufacture. But manufacturing is part of London’s history as well as banking.

For some reason I don’t understand, the article I have written for the November issue of The Critic has already been posted online (Fit for a king | Charles Saumarez Smith | The Critic Magazine), maybe because it is a bit more topical than usual. It should be free to view, unless you have already looked at other articles this month. The death of The Queen already seems another era.