Category: Institutions
Region: Europe
Year: 2001
Location: LONDON, U.K.
FT2 Construction: 27,448 sq ft
FT2 Ground: 0 sq ft
Involved Areas: Architecture, Interior Design

Collaborators:
LEGORRETA^®
Ricardo Legorreta
Víctor Legorreta
Noé Castro
Miguel Almaraz
Adriana Ciklik
Carlos Vargas C.
Marcela Cortina

Associate Architects:

Arquitecto Asociado: Marcela Cortina Arquitecto Ejecutivo: ALAN CAMP ARCHITECTS

Consultants:

CONTRACTOR: Gilmac
STRUCTURAL DESIGN: Packman Lucas
ENGINEERING SERVICES: Helix Services Consultancy
QUANTITY SURVEYOR: Hollingworth Associates
PROJECT DIRECTOR: Applied Solutions

Photographer:

Patrick Anderson
Benedict Luxmoore
Adrian Wilson


LEGORRETA was appointed as architect for the Fashion and Textiles Museum on the basis of his many colorful buildings in California and his native Mexico, including the West Wood House and El Papalote Childrens Museum. The site was a 1950s concrete framed warehouse in the Bermondsey Street Conservation Area in South London. Its expanses of brick would lend themselves perfectly to Legorretas elemental architectural language. Hence it was proposed to retain and convert the building into a museum, studio space and ancillary residential accommodation, with the external walls covered in brightly colored render. After an application for National Lottery funding was turned down, it was decided that a local architect should be engaged to modify the design to include additional flats. These would then be sold on the private market and used to fund the first phase of the museum development. On the recommendation of a local property developer, Alan Camp was appointed to undertake the re-design, as well as to carry out the detail design and construction phase services. Alan Camp retained Legorretas design for the facade and principal internal spaces, and the two offices co-operated closely throughout the design and construction phases. This ensured that both the limited budget and the program were adhered to, while maintaining the integrity of Legorretas original vision. The double-height main doorway, framed in pink render, leads through a blue barrel-vaulted entrance hall with the inevitable café/bookshop on the right, and into the main museum. Temporary exhibitions are accommodated at ground floor level, while a stepped ramp leads up to a mezzanine. This floor houses a permanent collection of the work of British designer Zandra Rhodes, together with Rhodes own studio and cutting room. The other doorway leads through a mosaic-floored entrance hall and up the stairs to a double-height yellow hallway with barrel-vaulted roof lights, which gives access to the residential accommodation. The pink rendered two-storey penthouse at the front of the building is occupied by Zandra Rhodes, whose design staff and students are accommodated in the adjacent four-bedroom flat. The remaining six flats and two galleried maisonettes at the rear of the building are clad in natural unpainted standing seam copper and have timber decked roof terraces that also serve as the means of escape in case of fire.