National Gallery - The Accommodation Hub

Built

A new office at the heart of the Grade I listed building, uniting the entire Gallery staff of 250+ within previously redundant/ underused spaces between and underneath the exhibition halls.

Within previously underused spaces between and beneath the gallery’s exhibition halls, Purcell have created a unified office space for the entire gallery staff. The refurbishment has included the conversion of two remaining lightwells and adjacent spaces at basement and ground floor in the 1870’s E.M Barry extension, creating eight floors of commercial workplaces designed to enhance collaboration, communication and community between over 250 members of staff.

NEW LONDON AWARDS 2022

Shortlisted in the RETROFIT category

The National Gallery sought to future-proof their working environment, creating a modern, functional, and collaborative space for their entire 250+ staff, unifying the workforce into a single location nestled beneath and around the galleries. The building’s 150-year-old fabric posed significant challenges, and the refurbishment, which saw the conversion of two lightwells and adjacent spaces of an 1870s extension into two seven-storey office and breakout-space atriums, was planned around the retention and efficient use of as much historic fabric as possible. The resulting 40,000ft2 workspace is defined by site-specific design principles of collaboration, communication, and community. For example, visual links - open balconies across lightwells and reopened/repaired low-level windows – achieve a sense of community through indicative transparency. We took colour cues from iconic paintings within the gallery’s collection to define and enhance areas within the new office.

Vote for this project in the ‘People’s Choice Award’. The voting deadline is 1 November 2022.

Project information

Status

Built

Borough

Westminster

Size

3950 sq m

Completion

April 2021

Location

Nelson's Column, London WC2N 5DU, UK

Team Credits