Wallpaper 6

and Civil Service offices, all before its stint as the

Museum of Mankind. Since 1997, parts of the building

have hosted temporary exhibitions for the RA, and

galleries such as Haunch of Venison and Pace. But in all

the principal rooms the years had left their mark –

partition walls, Formica desks, false ceilings and grubby

greige paint. There were modifications and mezzanines.

An institutional memory lingered. Much of the

circulation around the building had happened through

fire doors and up cramped service wells, brightly

lit by bare 100W bulbs, like a Martin Parr Polaroid.

This was what the RA acquired in 2001. In theory,

it had added a large listed Italianate building 30m

to the rear of the Royal Academy Schools complex,

with which it could connect to expand its footprint.

In practice, it was much less straightforward.

‘We wanted to bring the grandeur back,’ says RA

president Christopher Le Brun. ‘But as the years

passed without real progress, the discussions intensified

with people wanting to knock it down and keep only

the façade.’ Le Brun, a Royal Academician since 1996,

actually started working on the project before the RA

had raised the funds to buy it. The original master plan,

by Michael Hopkins, had involved an ambitious scheme

to glaze over the space between the two buildings, British

Museum-style. The costs exploded, and the plans were

shelved. A second, more modest, plan by Sandy Wilson

was then adopted. But the RA Schools, located between

6 Burlington Gardens and the RA’s main site at

Burlington House, wouldn’t let a link go through their

space, and there was nowhere else on site to relocate a

50 or so-strong student body. ‘So Sandy’s plan made the

link go all the way around the outside,’ explains Le Brun.

‘This wasn’t popular. I remember a meeting where

we showed it to all the architects in the RA. As of one

person they said no; they hated it. I think Piers Gough

even used a rude word. They said it’s obvious, you have

to go straight through the middle to connect the spaces.’

The project stalled again; the second master plan

lapsed on Wilson’s death in 2007. It seemed for a while

that a grand project might never happen – until a third

competition was held. ‘David Chipperfield won it, with

a scheme that did indeed go through the middle of the

site, and everything changed,’ says Le Brun. ‘I went to

talk to the schools with David’s project architect, and

they saw the quality of his scheme and quickly agreed

to it. That made all the difference. And as soon as we

could go through the middle of the site, all of David’s

ideas – a light touch, being straightforward, respecting

the integrity of the original building: they all worked.

We could start to see it really was a beautiful building

underneath. He had just done the Neues Museum.

He was clearly ideal. Not only was he an Academician,

he was able to treat a historic building with tact and

sympathy but also fairly robustly, not over-respectfully.’

Now, finally, this plan is coming to life, just in time

to mark the RA’s 250th anniversary. Like the Neues,

much of the pleasure is in the detailing. Chipperfield’s

favourite space is a former brick vault he reclaimed

from acres of piping, which now serves as an exhibition

space. Lit by pendant lamps designed by the architect,

the grand circulation spaces lead to impressive new

display areas. Tacita Dean will open the space, and then

a major Renzo Piano show will bring architecture

to the new building, something that is envisaged as

an essential part of the new programming. A permanent

architectural studio will host a programme of year-long

interventions, and for the first time there will be

a full event and lecture programme. ‘Having this

amazing lecture room is key,’ says Marlow. ‘There is

so much discussion and debate at the RA. Now we

have the space to programme as much as we want.’

All told, the plan increases the RA’s gallery space by

70 per cent. Chipperfield has also retained the windows

in a new middle gallery that overlooks the centre of the

site, and created a huge gallery in the west, where the

RA will show some of its permanent collection – much

of which is currently in storage – for the first time.

But the absolute key, the proposal which unlocked

the whole site, is the link bridge. Bar the lecture theatre,

it’s the only bit of what Le Brun calls ‘freestanding

Chipperfieldness’, and it’s spectacular. From it you

look out into the hidden courtyard and the schools

at the heart of the RA. And because the collections

galleries are free, they will surely help the RA become

a destination between its hugely influential shows.

‘My feeling about architecture,’ says Chipperfield,

‘is that visitors don’t have to look at everything all the

time. They have to be happy in the ambience of the

place, and only then do they realise someone has put

a lot of time into the detailing of it. Detailing has no

purpose on its own. Design has no purpose on its own.

But I do think that someone can smell or feel when

trouble and care has been taken. That was our experience

of Neues, and that is what we are hoping for here.’ ∂

The new Royal Academy of Arts opens on 19 May,

royalacademy.org.uk; davidchipperfield.com Drawings: © David Chipperfield Architects

Top, early concept drawings

of the RA Schools’ cast

corridor and Burlington

Gardens’ façade

Above, David Chipperfield’s

limited-edition cover, available

to subscribers, features an

architectural drawing of the

bridge linking the two

Royal Academy buildings

056 ∑

Architecture