Architect Lina Ghotmeh has gained the competitors to revamp the Western Vary galleries on the British Museum in London, beating Rem Koolhaas and David Chipperfield who had been additionally shortlisted for the formidable overhaul.
A complete of 5 architect-led groups had been included within the shortlist, which was introduced final 12 months, with every hoping to guide a revamp the British Museum has described as “one of many greatest cultural renovations undertaken anyplace on the planet”.
Ghotmeh designed the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion in London and has additionally been commissioned to design a recent artwork museum within the AlUla heritage area in northwestern Saudi Arabia. A web-based biography, which describes her as a “humanist architect”, says that in 2005 she gained the worldwide competitors for the design of the Estonian Nationwide Museum whereas working in London, collaborating with Ateliers Jean Nouvel and Foster & Companions.
The architect’s British Museum crew consists of the artist Ali Cherri, whose works discover geopolitical and cultural histories. “Lina will probably be consulting with Ali as a part of the broader consortium of people that will lend their experience to this venture,” says a museum spokesperson. Her apply, Lina Ghotmeh Structure (LGA), will work with the museum to develop preliminary designs by mid-2026.
In an Instagram publish, the British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan wrote that Ghotmeh’s preliminary concepts “unanimously impressed the jury with their magnificence, sensitivity and ingenuity and for her deep curiosity in archaeology”. These concepts embrace re-using rubble from the constructing course of “to line the partitions of the Lycian wing to ravishing impact”. Ghotmeh’s venture slides, proven on Cullinan’s Instagram feed, depict a gallery housing the controversial Parthenon Marbles.
Final 12 months Ghotmeh advised the Robb Report publication: “The sphere of archaeology is all the time telling you tales about how we used to construct and work together with the environment, continuously placing in perspective what has been executed already… It’s not simply an obsession with ecology, it’s additionally a quest for extra sustainable supplies. Any act of constructing has to have a constructive influence on its atmosphere.”
The competitors judging panel included ten artwork and structure specialists together with the Irish tutorial Yvonne Farrell and Meneesha Kellay, senior curator, up to date on the Victoria and Albert Museum. The chair of trustees, George Osborne, together with different trustees together with the artist Tracey Emin and the UK businessman Charlie Mayfield, additionally knowledgeable the choice.
Controversial masterplan
An enormous swathe of the museum’s show house—encompassing the “Western Vary” which at present homes collections equivalent to Historical Egypt, Greece and Rome—is ready to be redesigned beneath the revamp. The Western Vary covers a 3rd of the museum’s total gallery house, in addition to back-of-house areas, totalling 15,650 sq. metres.
The complicated of areas vary in age from the unique 1850s buildings designed by Robert Smirke, in addition to later additions equivalent to Gallery 10 and 22. “All the buildings are in want of improve to satisfy up to date constructing efficiency requirements, and plenty of include extremely important heritage constructing material,” the museum beforehand mentioned in a press release.
The Western Vary refurbishment is a part of the broader museum masterplan which additionally features a new museum Vitality Centre designed to part out the usage of fossil fuels, changing them with low-carbon applied sciences. This venture—partly funded with authorities help—ought to save 1,700 tonnes a 12 months of carbon dioxide, making the establishment extra sustainable. The museum additionally opened a brand new £64m storage and analysis facility in Berkshire final 12 months known as BM_ARC.
The price of the complete masterplan venture is more likely to attain lots of of thousands and thousands of kilos, probably greater than a billion. In a controversial transfer, the oil and gasoline firm BP is to provide £50m over the following decade to assist fund the redevelopment. In response, environmental campaigners known as on potential architects not to participate within the contest.
