The brick building that houses the museum was built in 1910 as storage space for Allen Forge & Welding and later expanded for The Brogden Produce Company. At the same time, rails were brought here along which goods were delivered from the local railway station. During the reconstruction of Brooks + Scarpa, it was decided to preserve not only the old classicist volume, but also to transfer the image of the loading dock to the new part of the museum.
The architects added a deliberately asymmetrical glass vestibule to the existing building on the east side, increasing the ground floor area by 80 m2. Its main decoration is the original sloping roof reminiscent of a folded sheet of paper. It is made of colored glass with a pattern reminiscent of sea pebbles. The massive structure seems to press through the fragile volume of the foyer, overhanging it from both sides with huge consoles. One of them forms a canopy over the entrance, the other forms a canopy over the sculpture garden adjacent to the building, where it is supposed to show installations, or arrange an outdoor recreation area.
The lobby retains the atmosphere of a historic industrial building. From an open staircase on the first floor, a freight elevator is visible - bypassing it, visitors and exhibits, according to the authors' plan, are like passing through a loading dock before entering the exhibition halls. In the main gallery, the roof beams were left open, which made it possible to increase the height of the space due to the existing mezzanine floor and additionally illuminate it through a semicircular window in the tympanum of the pediment.
N. K.
