Arts
Project: Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
Location: Coventry
Architects: Pringle Richards Sharratt

Brief: To enable visitors to once again enjoy the Herbert's full range of artworks and artefacts from collections that include visual arts, archaeology and a social and industrial history collection that shows how the people of Coventry have lived and worked since the 1600s. Pringle Richards Sharratt (PRS) won the competition to refurbish and extend the existing gallery and museum in 2001. Its design turned the back of the building into a new front, facing towards the Cathedral and University Square, creating a route connecting it to the existing main entrance. The new building closes the south easterly corner of the square with a positive urban statement, in the form of a two storey high glazed route flanked by new galleries and a history centre. This replaces a 1960s Brutalist concrete and glass addition and improves the relationship with Bayley Lane and the historic buildings opposite, mediating between the Herbert and the historic street pattern through landscape interventions.

Link: Plan Magazine

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