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Hugh Lane Art Gallery:2001 - 2003 / Project Cost: €8.3m. / Client: Dublin City CouncilOne of Dublin’s popular cultural institutes, the Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Square has undergone a recent renaissance. Gilroy McMahon, together with Gallery Director Barbara Dawson, City Architect Jim Barrett and Exhibition Curator Christina Kennedy, commenced a process of think-tank in order to redefine what precisely makes a good gallery experience. There are obvious contradictions. To compete for public attention, a gallery visit has to be enjoyable and social; browsing in the bookshop, hanging out in the café. On the other hand, engaging with a painting is a profoundly spiritual experience. Someone said that a contemporary museum was part temple part supermarket. The think-tank produced a couple of new ideas upon which the design was predicated. The first was a conclusion that the three most important elements in gallery design are circulation, circulation and yes circulation; not quite the normal suspects. It appeared as imperative to have a central and legible sequential circulation route off which there would be choices; i.e. an inner sequential route with outer selective ones. There would be a beginning, an outward journey and a return to the beginning in the form of a loop. Retracing ones steps along a single outward path does not work. It reduces the vividness of the experience to something desultory. The second idea came from a conclusion that the dissemination of culture has many similarities to the dissemination of any consumer item. It is a retail activity. Retail observes two vital tenets. The first is the elimination of resistance between the potential ‘purchaser’ and the ‘product’, which in the gallery context becomes “do not create a gallery architecture which competes with the contents”.
Thus the gallery emerged as a juxtaposition of two quite different and opposing types of space. The paintings would hang in tranquil gallery spaces without distraction (the temple), lit by constant daylight from the North or a similar artificial light. The other activities including transit would be places of maximum distraction with shafts of sunlight, external aspect, glimpses of sky, shadows and contrast in order to provide sensorial refreshment and prepare the viewer for the next ‘spiritual’ experience. So the building flows from static space to dynamic space. There are surprises. The ultimate is the courtyard, aspect to which is both limited and manipulated to vary and reshape its composition of golden sandstone, ribbons of glass mosaic, moving water, greenery and sky reflection. Materials are white rendered walls, oak floors, painted steel and glass. Gilroy McMahon are particularly pleased that the new, although entirely contemporary in its architectural vocabulary, fuses with the existing seamlessly as a single entity. Located back of house, the only face the ‘new’ Hugh Lane has on the world is the glazed staircase link on Parnell Square. Designed in contrast to the Georgian architecture of its neighbours the link offers dramatic views across the city and doubles as an advertising mechanism broadcasting to the outside what is happening within. |
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The architecture must step back in the overall synthesis. The second
tenet is the importance of taking loving care of the purchaser, which
in the gallery context becomes ”create a place of variety, spontaneity
and sensory refreshment for the viewer”. After all engagement with
art is an absorbing, emotionally charged and a sometimes draining process.