Olympicopolis: Sadler’s Wells & 史密森学会 伦敦斯特拉特福德
Alison Brooks Architects were on one of six teams shortlisted to design a new cultural quarter at the London 2012 Olympic Park, expected to include new outposts of the V&A and 史密森学会 museums. On a team with AECOM, 斯坦顿·威廉姆斯, 一种蛋白激酶2, 阿西夫•汗, 卡莫迪Groarke, Charcoalblue and Haworth Tompkins, ABA designed the Sadler’s Wells and 史密森学会.
The Sadler’s Wells Dance Theatre, Choreographic School and Hip Hop Academy is at the heart of the creative complex. An intensely mixed-use building, it forms an animated backdrop to the civic square, it connects to the V&A, it contains floors of additional Gallery Space on its upper levels and, like a great plinth, supports the 史密森学会 Institution above. All of this activity is anchored by the monolithic auditorium and its foyers that span between Carpenter’s Road and the Canal-side promenade.
The building is conceived as a huge steel ‘grillage’ – a weathering steel frame with a pleated, accordion-like façade that expresses both permeability and industrial-strength robustness. 在晚上, the deep reveals will create opportunities for dramatic lighting, 标志, 横幅, 和阳台. The frame’s triangular folded plates form a colonnade at piazza level, providing a sheltered passage between neighbouring institutions. 在高层, the plates are modulated to offer shading to glazed areas and frequent balconies around the building’s perimeter: the façade itself act as a stage. At first floor the façade opens to reveal a huge outdoor ‘dancer’s balcony’ fronting the Sadlers Wells fly-tower. This high-level stage overlooks the square, a prime location for watching events below.
Above Sadler’s Wells hovers the 史密森学会 Institution. This autonomous volume acts as beacon, its faceted exterior expressed in mirror-polished stainless steel. In contrast to the cor-ten steel of Sadlers Wells that refers to the site’s industrial legacy, the 史密森学会 galleries are enclosed with an enigmatic, ever-changing reflective surface of mirror polished steel. By using two modes of the same raw material, the stacked institutions express both the industrial nature of ‘warehouse theatre’ and an extraordinary ‘cabi网。 of curiosities’, the building also reveals the multiple structural and visual qualities of a ferrous, carbon-based metal.
The 史密森学会 Institution is world renowned for its vast collection of artifacts, its research and its public engagement across its 19 museums. To reflect this significance the 史密森学会 Galleries building has been uniquely positioned as a ‘small tall building’ at the centre of the new Cultural Quarter. Hovering above the Sadler’s Wells building, atop a great five storey high ‘vertical foyer’ the 史密森学会 has three significant roles: to act as a ‘beacon’ announcing the quarter’s civic square from a distance; to signal a public ‘rooftop destination’ and skygarden, to represent the Cultural Quarter’s international reach and culture of sharing.
The 史密森学会 is articulated as an autonomous volume clad in mirror-polished stainless steel, folded and pleated in a similar manner to the Sadler’s Wells rust coloured frame. This folded mirrored surface will create an ever-changing myriad of light and colour, reflecting the weather, surrounding landscapes and the night sky. At the same time this high volume shelters its sculpture court and roof garden. The four levels of the building are articulated as setbacks to allow light from above to wash down between the layered walls, or to act as viewing platforms.
A glittering cabi网。 of curiosities, this elevated setting for the 史密森学会’s collections will offer an intense, immersive environment for its visitors and participants – a truly public platform for discovering and diffusing new knowledge.
