Engaging in Culture By John McAslan

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Randy. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I'm very touched. I'm honored as is Dave and myself to be back in one of our favorite cities in the world. No question about that. And engaging with some of the wonderful people of this city and culture. So it's an enriching experience in many ways for us. And it's two years since we've been here which is far too long a gap as far as I think we are concerned. So many thanks for inviting me this evening. Okay, I'm going to just I think I've got about 45 minutes and I'm just going to say next if we can young lady could help me move through the slides but no I mean I think when we first came to CSMVS if you can believe it was about 40 years ago when Dave and I came or 43 40 years ago when we came in our first trip to India which makes obviously you realize that we're older than well certainly I'm older than I look Dave is not but we have a long long relationship with the city. And rather embarrassingly when I first came, one of the highlights of the trip would be to meet Charles Correa. But we had got a very very inexpensive flight over. It was delayed, delayed, delayed for days and days. We eventually got here. We stayed, we were very fortunate to stay at the old Taj Mahal Palace Hotel before it was fully renovated. And I remember calling up the office of Charles Correa to make sure that the meeting with Mr. Correa was still in his diary and I think it was his wife who answered the phone. She said, 'Oh yes, Mr. Correa is looking forward to but having not had sleep for two or three days, Dave and I decided just to lie down for a few hours and unfortunately I woke at 7:00 that evening having missed the meeting with Mr. Correa.' So that was our first rather inner I suppose unsuccessful foray into culture in Bombay but thankfully we've made no more we haven't had any subsequent failures in that respect and so I'm delighted to be back 43 years or 42 years on from our first visit. I'm glad I didn't sleep in and miss the lecture. So maybe we should begin. So cultural architecture is really at the heart of what we do. I can't imagine not being involved in cultural architecture and it particularly relates as Ranica was saying to a series of different sort of project types. Majority of which are old into new something we're very interested in. Not just new architecture but also turning old buildings sometimes buildings that weren't designed as cultural institutions into culture institutions and you'll see some of those this evening. I think there's five seven projects in total we've got I might rush through one or two of them because I think they're probably we probably don't have enough time so apologize in advance if one or two of them I rather skip through. So I think if we could start perhaps the first slide. So the first project I'm going to talk about is the Burrell Collection in Glasgow next. The Burrell Collection is was designed in the 1970s built in the 1980s. It took about 12 years to build and is this wonderful cornucopia it might be called of one man's collection private art collection so William Burrell. And we'll come back to this in a later next. It was well that looks a bit starry but it was very successful when it was built. Our job effectively was to update the museum and we'll come on to that a little in some details later but we're very proud that it won the Art Fund Museum of the Year last year next and has been sorry about the colors here but it's been particularly successful I think in many regards not so much for the awards but the fact that it engaged so many local people 15,000 local people apparently were involved in the project it had something like one and a half million visitors as you can see there over the last two and a half years. And if you imagine that the museum had started at about a million visitors when it was built in 1983, it then dwindled year on year on year on year. And when it closed in 2016 there was something like 100,000 people were passing through the museum. And you think, well, why did that happen? Because the collection was still there. It was for the various reasons, not just the fact that the collection hadn't rotated and people weren't seeing new things, but also that the building fabric had deteriorated significantly over time. And I guess that those statistics make it one of the top I believe 100 museums in the world, which is great for the Burrell. The collection was the life's work of Sir William Burrell who made a fortune from buying and selling ships and spent it all really on art and he started collecting when he was 15 years old and he collected for something like 75 years. So he was addicted as I think somebody once said to the collection of art and towards the end of his life was buying up to 15 sometimes 20 works of art a week as he tried to build up a collection which he aimed to rival the Hearst collection. He was very deeply competitive. He wanted to have a museum built in his honor and he wanted a collection that would be worthy of an international museum. Next and he eventually not only gifted his collection to the city of Glasgow but provided the funding for the museum itself and his collection was really very varied. There was art from 5,000 years of civilization. 9,000 pieces in total which start with very earliest Greek and Egyptian sculpture, Chinese works of Chinese art, very strong on Gothic European late Gothic tapestries and stained glass and then moves forward to having some wonderful work from French impressionist Degas and others and Rodin. So it's a very mixed collection of work but very specifically in a way captured his taste and his interests in art and then he gifted it to the city itself. Next this eventually after about 20 years following his passing a site was found for the museum itself. He didn't want the museum to be within Glasgow itself. He thought it was a polluted city. He wanted it to be in the countryside and eventually a site was found which was relatively close to Glasgow about 3 kilometers away called Pollock Park on the left and a competition took place and it was won by a young academic architect called Barry Gasson from Cambridge and two associates. And really what defined the museum, the black and white drawing here was that what Gasson did was he whilst most of the other entries positioned the museum right in the middle of the site, he pushed the museum right up to the woodland edge on the northwest corner of the site which gave it a very unique aspect and that really was the winning move for Gasson. Next the model on the left hand side you can see the form of it. The left hand slanted wall effectively is the woodland edge. There's then a glass roof which in the center of the building runs east west and then at 90 degrees to that an extended portal which becomes the main entrance for the museum itself. And then a series of galleries that run in a north south and indeed an east west direction. And this is an early sketch of one of those principal spaces which we'll look at in a moment next. But to put the Burrell in context, I think is incredibly important because it came at a time when British architecture in particular, but also European architecture was in a state of flux. Designed as I said in 1970s, built by 1983. So it sort of bridged brutalism and postmodernism and even the beginning of what you might call high-tech architecture. So on the bottom right is a wonderful museum which slightly predates the Burrell which is the Louisiana museum in Copenhagen which is very Scandinavian in its design. Then you've got the brutalist architecture of the Hayward Gallery top right, the Barbican top left. You've then got James Stirling, a brilliant architect who sort of dabbled in postmodernism towards the end of his life. And that is slightly beyond the completion of the Burrell. But as a young architect in all of that, the thing that when I was training that really excited me was the development of high-tech architecture. And on the far left you can see one of the first buildings by Norman Foster, the Sainsbury Center which blew us as a young architecture student everything out as far as I was concerned. Postmodernism was a fad. Everybody loved European work of Aalto and others as in Louisiana. But there was something about high technology architecture which as a student I think we were all completely taken blown away by but that's in a way the timeline I guess of Burrell from its predating it the development of the concept its completion and so it's a building whilst it's very much of its time it bridged this connection between European modernism and the work of Aalto and others and the development of high-tech architecture with brutalism and postmodernism in the middle. Next photographs of the building itself, wonderful building but eventually next it suffered elements of decay which required it to be significantly rebuilt. But one of the elements that made it so interesting was for Gasson and indeed for the collection was that Burrell collected architectural artifacts particularly buying from the Hearst family and the key part of the brief for the project was to embed those architectural elements into the architecture. So here you've got a piece of French 15th 16th century window surround. You've got the very important Hornby Castle portal which becomes a key element in the expression of the Burrell and its sort of entrance to the threshold to the galleries itself and then the Bridgewater ceiling again early 15th century timber ceiling which is a part of the collection. So it's not just artifacts and sculpture it's bits of architecture which are embedded into the architecture and which I think makes the Burrell particularly rich next but as I said 20 years after the building was built it was in decay the numbers of visitors was declining significantly the building leaked you can see in the bottom left the rather uninspired school kids looking at a Degas in what we're thinking, what on earth is that? I'd love to be just out there stealing apples or kicking a football around or something. Whatever I used to do as a kid. And then in the bottom right, the display techniques had run their course. The building was sadly was in decay, had issues of accessibility, but there was one architectural element in the building which really never worked and nobody ever really talked about which was in the middle of the building. There was a lecture theater, a dark sort of volumetric space which was barely used and it was this sort of blockage right in the middle of the Burrell and I think that was the element that we really figured out had to be removed. We this was a building which is highly regarded. It's what we call grade A listed in Scotland. So it's a protected building. It's the highest level of protected building and it's the most recent protected building of this type. So it's new, it's highly protected, but it's this rather grim space in the middle which was the lecture theater which nobody ever used. So we really had three elements of work to contend with. The first was to improve accessibility, external access accessibility with the park and into and through the museum within Pollock Park, which meant that there had been some modest level changes. We removed car parking and made it more discreet. We got a more kind of engaged pathway system through the park. So accessibility was key and also to create new entrance points for the museum which would pick up people as they walked around the park rather than through one single door. So its permeability for access was important to the brief. Next, there was the usability of the building itself. And I'm not going to go into this in much detail, but the areas in blue, despite the fact the building was highly protected, were the areas that we felt and the client felt needed significant interventions to make it work better. One was to build galleries. I'll just show from here is to make more use of the galleries on the principal floor. Because it's principal floor, lower floor and upper level for more use of the galleries there open up this space lecture theater and rather crucially take the next floor which was offices and to turn those into maker spaces. So it's the making of art. And by doing that we got instead of having one floor for exhibitions we effectively created three floors. The lower floor became an exhibition space. Crucially it took the collections care center. So all the collections all 9,000 objects are on the museum site itself which is incredibly helpful for them to rotate displays. It allows a thematic approach to the presentation of the collections. And then on the uppermost level on the far right we have the makers gallery which was really about which was a very I think enriching part of the story of the collection which was how it was made. How was the art made? And that's a very interesting I think and rather dynamic part of the museum itself. Next. So the and then from the architectural point of view on the upper slide where we did nothing. It looks exactly the same despite the fact it was really taken apart like an old kind of sport like an old if you bought an old Ambassador that's lying in a field somewhere and you wanted to restore it. It's a bit like an old Ambassador. It was the exterior looks exactly as it was but the engine was replaced which is the lower slide. The engine was replaced at the Burrell. The energy systems were revitalized. We opened up some volumes to make connective spaces but effectively it looks exactly the same. Next and impossible to read but the third part of our project the first being access the second usability and communicating it itself as a museum. The third was to transform the ecological footprint of the museum. And you just have to believe me when I say that what this is saying all of these diagrams is that we now have a BREEAM excellent which is the highest level of ecological performance for a building. And we've dramatically reduced by 80% or something the embodied carbon which is on the top right. It's gone from figure 126 to 22. It's gone from an E to a B rating. And the envelope was rebuilt. So the envelope is now no longer leaks, no longer allows air to blow in and out. And it's got photovoltaics on the roof, which means the majority of the energy is provided from the existing site itself with ground source heat pumps and photovoltaic elements on the roof and all sorts of improved energy elements. So the costs of running the museum have been slashed by about 85%. Next, we built during COVID, which was very challenging. There's the lecture theater being removed and the void, which was this important connective piece being added. Next, an aerial view of the museum with the city of Glasgow beyond in its park setting with it being pushed up against the woodland edge. Next, the restored building looks exactly the same, but it's reglazed or upcycled glazing upcycled mullions and transoms. Everything taken apart and then put back as it was. Next, the a new entrance that we formed on the left, the retained entrance on the right. Next, the courtyard again reinstated. There's the Hornby portal which becomes a principal entrance into what is called the walk in the woods which is the key kind of enfilade gallery which takes you along the northern side of the museum itself. Next, important that not just the museum is for everybody particularly strong in its education program for young people as it is very strong here which is absolutely key to get young people engaged in art and important that the whole process of conservation and occasional kind of active conservation to some of the objects on display is visible to those visiting the museum. Next, the walk in the woods, which is this absolutely gorgeous space, which is effectively the object displays through time through the 5,000 years of civilization, which is recorded in the collection. Looking down one of these cross-axis galleries to the Chinese figure of Lohan in the distance. Next and then the rooms which had never really been particularly active on the eastern side of the gallery have now become particularly conditioned spaces for tapestries for late Gothic European art, other elements that are artifacts built into the architecture, incredibly strong and I think very effective museological techniques to explain the making of these elements of architecture and putting them into some sort of time piece. You can see that in the far left. That's a little film which explains puts these elements in context. Next. And then the void space that we made which replaces in usable terms the lecture theater and on every Friday night there's music played by students from the Royal Conservatoire in Scotland which is great. So this is filled with music, there's events, there's all sorts of things happen. And you get this connective piece from the main gallery in the foreground, sorry, in the middle picture down to the lower level and then up to the mezzanine level on the right. And this was very simply made all of this. I mean our budget at the Burrell was very low. And so we had to everything that we revealed was effectively just surfaces that we then either painted or plastered or left as simple as possible. Next and then the on-site storage or the collections care element is really key. So the storage which has this wonderful technique of projection on the upper picture all sorts of workshop visits school groups local community groups objects being placed taken from stores back and forth that part of the collection is absolutely vital so everybody can see feel part of the collection in its entirety. Next on the mezzanine level on the right looking down to the bookshop from the maker space restaurant on the bottom left. Next. And then looking from that mezzanine level down to one of the multi-volume gallery spaces. Next. And then at night it's so I think it does it sits very beautifully in the landscape. It's now highlighted and there's a whole new kind of luminosity which we created with the team. Next. So that's the Burrell. For the British Museum we're doing we've completed one and we're just about to begin a second project which is effectively a giant collections facility. So collections care conservation research storage next presentation of the collections in a limited way and I only show this because there's a vast master plan project underway at the British Museum currently underway and the British Museum which has got a display of a million objects which has two million years of history. 2 million years of civilization, a million objects, 1% of the collections on display. So 80,000 objects on display and seven I can't do the arithmetic, but take 8,000 off 8 million and you're left with the objects that are not in display. And so it's an awful lot. I mean it is vast and I think that 8 million is rather underestimated because 8 million isn't just one object. It can be multi-objects. So it may be actually many times more than 8 million. I don't whatever it is, it's a giant number. Anyway, so we submitted and I'm only showing this for no reason for the fact that we're disappointed, but we submitted for the project. We didn't win this project, but this is the end. One of the ideas there was to pull everything out of the museum that didn't really need to be in the museum and could get the benefit of external use as well. So the restaurant on the left became accessible from the courtyard and the street, the bookshop to the right was to be accessible from the street as well and that would give space back to the British Museum to run the building more. We felt that there should be greater use of the museum itself and part of that would inevitably also be bringing back some of the storage, increasing the amount of the capacity for exhibition space by releasing some of the storage space which moved out to Reading which is where we've taken part of the collection. Next. So our project effectively is nothing to do well it is connected of course to the main museum but effectively it's a collections care facility and the collections at the British Museum are displayed this is rather makes it look rather grim. It is not like this at all. But as obviously there is magnificent collections displayed throughout. Next but the storage of those collections 3 million objects were within external stores such as Blythe House and this is Blythe House which is in Hammersmith in London which was sold by the government and the receipts from that used to build the BMR center which rebuilt. So this is obviously pre Blythe House being before the collections moved to our site. Next. Now you're going to see two buildings side by side one after another here which effectively and I'm in no way embarrassed about this are effectively what you might call glorified sheds but they're sheds with extraordinary performance criteria that we had to meet. Both need to meet passive house criteria which they do which is the highest rating of ecological performance. For the BMR it sat on a very complicated site where there was a major utilities chamber which ran diagonally through the site. So a lot of the funding early on was to protect that utilities tunnel and to allow us to build on top. And effectively we took a pretty standard portal frame and then re-engineered it in order that it would provide the level of fire protection internally and free spanning to allow it to act as a series of collections care and accessible stores and research space and public spaces. And all of these are then served by a series of streets which run between the portals themselves. So there are three portal streets which you communicate with. There is we could afford one open space which is an external courtyard. But this is a very economical building or actually really rather wonderful landscape again very ecological approach to it which our landscape team took. Access around the perimeter obviously for trucks and all sorts of things but you

It's a building that sits in its landscape despite being a shed, with a black pine exterior and portal frame. The public part includes wild flowers in springtime and entrance points where students from Reading University begin their engagement with the collections. We're also designing a second phase, another shed for 1.2 million objects, waiting for funding. The courtyard has simple finishes like block work, exposed services, concrete floors. It's not a museum but a huge education facility with opportunities for storage, conservation, research, interpretation, and learning.

Next, the artworks in Scotland, richer in program. The National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh have three galleries with about three and a half million visitors. The principal building from the 1820s had inadequate collections care. My favorite memory is Velazquez's 'Old Woman Cooking Eggs', a centerpiece. The site in Granton is a regeneration project with a similar diagram to BMR but more public engagement, including an old factory building. It's about 15,000 square meters, with public interfaces, storage for 250,000 objects, conservation areas overlooking the Firth of Forth, and a maker space in the Medelvik factory for local employment. It's on site, about two and a half years from completion.

Next, master planning projects. The Courtauld Gallery in London, within Somerset House, has an unparalleled impressionist collection including Monet's Thames paintings. Our project turned pre-existing rooms into collections care and research spaces, and opened up a volume for the impressionists gallery. In Victoria, Canada, we developed a master plan for the Royal BC Museum, focusing on First Nations collections. We proposed a new conservation building, but it was built elsewhere. We reworked the entrance to bring natural history elements to the front, and that project is still alive.

Next, projects in Doha and Riyadh. In Doha, we were involved in Msheireb, a low-energy inner-city regeneration. We were architects for four museums of daily life and the development of Qatar, challenging subjects like slavery, led by Sheikha Moza. We used a sacrificial building HH2 to understand construction by craftsmen from India and Bangladesh, using adobe and ornate details. We restored buildings like Radwani House without air conditioning, and Ben Jelmood as a slavery museum. Interventions left upper parts intact, infilled courtyards with glass roofs, and added gallery spaces below ground. The objects on display were humble but culturally significant. We introduced delicate service systems.

Next, the Muhammad bin Salman Global Center for Arabic Calligraphy in Riyadh, a competition we won. Arabic calligraphy has a rich history and informs architecture. The site overlooks the At-Turaif UNESCO site. We reused existing footprints and designed buildings to appear as if they emerged over time, using adobe, concrete, and rammed earth. The plan is based around a collective space and courtyard. Museum spaces have cross beams every four meters referencing historical construction. There are education spaces for calligraphy and a principal tower. That's it. Thank you.