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| You are in National Portrait Gallery | Publications: Visitors' Guides | Architectural History | |||||||||
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Out of Print 'This history is about the container, not the contents.' So state Graham Hulme and Brian Buchanan at the start of a fascinating account of the National Portrait Gallery's buildings, from its first home in an elegant Georgian terraced house, via South Kensington and Bethnal Green, to Ewan Christian's purpose-built institution in St Martin's Place. The authors examine exterior and interior with an eye both to architectural detail and practical purpose, such as the need for plenty of natural light, the radical intention of using sloping surfaces to carry exhibits and the importance of east access by short, gentle flights of stairs. Early chapters give the background of the parliamentary debates of the 1840s and 1850s that brought the Gallery into being; the anonymous donor who provided most of the funding for the St Martin's Place building; and the building's architect - his life, character and enormous output of some 2000 designs. In 1933 a new wing - the Duveen - was added alongside the north block and in the 1980s an opportunity arose to extend the collection's accommodation across Orange Street. Since then improvements have been virtually continuous; author Kenneth Powell analyses the contributions of the famous contemporary architects who have left their mark on the Gallery: Roderick Gradidge, John Miller and Su Rogers, Piers Gough. The book ends with the NPG 2000 development, Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones's masterplan, which slotted the new five-storey Ondaatje Wing between the Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. A dramatic photographic essay by John Goto joins past with present. On site while the Ondaatje Wing materialised in the former service yard, he captured panoramas of steel, scaffold and roofscape, then digitally manipulated them into works of art that both record and revise reality. 245 x 276 (landscape), 240 pages
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All images and text are subject to copyright
protection. 22 November 2008 |
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Comments and suggestions National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London WC2H 0HE. Tel: 020 7306 0055 |
