It was an article in the Culture magazine of The Sunday Times on 2nd July 2017 that made we want to visit the V & A Museum, the £49.5 million Exhibition Road Quarter designed brilliantly by Amanda Levete Architects and built by ace contractor Wates. When I arrived there on Monday, imagine my disappointment when I found the fabulous courtyard fenced off while an awful piece of structural timber artwork is being built.
Why on earth would anyone want to spoil this wonderful open space. This is what it should have looked like:
More on the rooflights later!
My photo of the pillars and arch does not do justice to frontage on Exhibition Road, with the fencing and crane behind.
This is what it should look like.
I did manage to take a snap of the new (nearly deserted) cafe on the courtyard (but only when I was leaving, as it is not visible through the fencing). It is open to anyone straying from Exhibition Road. The perforated metal screens on either side of the photo close to give security over night.
The perforations give visibility through the screen to the courtyard when closed.
The article in the Sunday Times explains how this area was originally the location of the old boilers, hidden with a screen of columns and solid panels. A forbidding facade. Now the vision of the original architect Aston Webb has been realised after many studies finally came to fruition with the opening up of the facade.
The courtyard then became the catalyst for a new exhibition space underground, the construction of which can be seen in a marvellous time lapse video at https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/exhibition-road-building-project under the heading "Exhibition Road Building Project Construction".
Jeremy Melvin in the Sunday Times article is very informative: Putting the gallery underground meant the screen along Exhibition Road could be returned to Webb's original intention, verified by a drawing they discovered, to have openings between the columns. The gallery roof could become the entrance court, with three previously hidden historical facades around its edges, Careful and clever modelling of the roof (the courtyard) into a 3D shape allowed for a cafe, a rooflight to the gallery below, enough flat spaces for a significant sculpture display (oh no!), a ramp and steps to the entrance (of the museum) 7ft below road level, with steps wide enough to double as informal outdoor seating.
Inside the entrance, the new gallery is reached by a long staircase.
The subterranean gallery goes right to the edges of the courtyard, giving a 12,000 square feet space .... a large 125 feet long column-free space. The structure is amazing. Four columns and spanning between are huge steel beams.
A remarkable space, with daylight flooding in from those in the courtyard. It is the fourteen steel trusses that give the sawtooth effect inside.
But here was my second disappointment of the day. Amanda Levete was convinced that curators could successfully match the light and dark for their exhibitions. Unfortunately those installing "The Future is Here" were not interested and their dummy ceiling might have been better in an aircraft hanger!
THE FUTURE IS HERE
The only way I could see the new gallery was to buy a ticket for this exhibition. There were a few interesting pieces:
The world's first portable computer from 1982, the Epson HX-20
A map of submarine cables
The Facebook Aquila solar powered drone that spans the whole of the ceiling. Two of the four yellow propellors are seen above. A wingspan longer that a Boeing 747 but weighing less than 1,000 pounds, it is designed to bring internet connection to remote parts of the world.
"Wearable tech from ancient Rome" is a ring key ring.
However, I was far more impressed with the cafe. Here is the Gamble Room by James Gamble 1865-78.
Next to my table were some of the ceramics that decorated the walls.
Leaving the V & A, I made my way up the length of Exhibition Road, past the V&A Henry Cole Wing and, below, the "Geological Survey and Museum" entrance of the Natural History Museum.
Then into Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. First of all the Serpentine Pavilion.
Then the Serpentine Gallery.
Crossing into Kensington Gardens I found the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain which I had never seen before. What a brillaint piece of engineering.
In the distance was the The London Mastaba on the Serpentine.
Then the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.
Nearly at the end of a long walk from one end of Kensington Gardens to the other side near Lancaster Gate is the newly refurbished Italian Gardens.
With a view across to Buck Hill where on Saturday afternoons when I was ten or eleven, there would have been a large number of cub football matches being played.
In those days there were many Kensington packs playing in a league run by volunteers. My father ran the 37th Kensington pack and carried the poles for goalposts from his shop on Kensington High Street when it closed at lunchtime on a Saturday. We would meet him there with our gear and take the bus up to the far end of Kensington Gardens. Somehow we usually managed to mark out the same pitch every week, even though it was on a pronounced slope. In my final year in the cubs, we played "away" in our last game against the only other pack in the running for the league. We came out winners, me with a badly bruised toe.
It was time to take the underground from Lancaster gate to Barbican Centre where I was meeting up with Alison, Richard and Karen for refreshments in the outdoor cafe.
Then it was off to St Paul's Cathedral for Choral Evensong at 5 pm. A good friend of Alison was singing in the choir and, as it turned out, another three people she knew including the conductor and his wife. It is free entry to the cathedral for this event which is good to know. We were one of the first in and took our seats in the front row with a great view of the choir.
At the end of the service we said goodbye to Richard and Karen and made our way home. An enjoyable, if tiring, day. After runs on both the previous days, being on my feet most of the day on Monday meant my legs were objecting the next day.
Then it was off to St Paul's Cathedral for Choral Evensong at 5 pm. A good friend of Alison was singing in the choir and, as it turned out, another three people she knew including the conductor and his wife. It is free entry to the cathedral for this event which is good to know. We were one of the first in and took our seats in the front row with a great view of the choir.
At the end of the service we said goodbye to Richard and Karen and made our way home. An enjoyable, if tiring, day. After runs on both the previous days, being on my feet most of the day on Monday meant my legs were objecting the next day.
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