building for the arts
form : scale : process

muf have established a design sensibility for the arts, whereby the building actively mediates between content and context to create a dynamic, experiential relationship between the viewer and the viewed; the interior and the exterior.

muf are able to maximise budgets, identify and source gorgeous materials, develop unique applications for them and to integrate low tech/high innovation environmental and structural engineering into design. muf have experience of achieving planning permission in sensitive situations.

clients include:

Arts Council England

St Albans Council

Jason Lowe

Museum Pavillion

Client St Albans City and District Council
Budget £ 700,000
1999-2004

A pavillion to house an in situ Roman mosaic located in a municipal park. The building is designed to make apparent the relationships between the remains of the invisible city beneath the grass, the current activities in the park and the contemporary town of St Albans. The material construction of the facade uses oyster shell aggregate to reintroduce Roman building materials; the tilted mirror soffit gives glimpsed views both from outside and inside the building and the planted roof relates the structure to the surrounding park. The exterior landscape integrates interpretation and creates new places to sit. muf worked with the client to achieve scheduled monument constent in a highly sensitive site.

The Lowe Building

Client Jason Lowe
Budget £ 2 million
Due for completion Spring 2009

A 5-storey, mixed-use sustainable development of business and residential units on the south side of the Regents Canal (with a tall grass and wetland habitat on the roof). The proposal includes renovation of an existing canal-side mooring, provision of a communal terrace, a swan refuge and a planted reed roof with nesting provision for ducks, coots, wagtails and other wildlife. An elevation of clay-fired tiles refers to the industrial character of other buildings lining the Regents Canal. Provision of a framed view from the street through the ground floor of the building to the canal beyond allows passing pedestrians on Whitmore Road to glimpse at otherwise private/exclusive views of the canal. Planning permission was awarded in August 2006.

Museum of Women's Art

Feasibility study funded by Arts Council of England

The study was constructed as a conceptual design model that both tested and refined the ambition of the client. The study exposed and exceeded the paradox of revealing a hidden cannon of work only to enclose it again in another hermetic institution. The model describes strategies and spatial arrangements to make connections and juxtapositions, both actual and visual, that allow for a curation of the museum whereby the social, political and historic conditions that have marginalised women in art history can be disclosed.

Walsall Art Gallery

Shortlisted
Competition scheme

The scheme is both a proposal for a building and a framework to negotiate the process of design refinement. The design is predicated in the limits of the building envelope and the potential to curate a relationship between the interior of the building and the surrounding town; between the exhibit and the viewer; the historic collection and contemporary art practice and between the adult and the child. Elevations, plans and sections articulate the controlled penetration of art into the street and the street into the place of art. Value judgements of territory, modesty and exhibition dictate levels of opacity, transparency and translucency.