Archinect - News

Dulwich Picture Gallery to undergo most significant redevelopment in decades, designed by Carmody Groarke and Kim Wilkie

2023-08-10T11:35:00-04:00

London’s Southwark Council has granted approval for the redevelopment of Dulwich Picture Gallery and its gardens. Led by architects Carmody Groarke and landscape artist Kim Wilkie, the project will be the biggest redevelopment of the past two decades for the venue, which originally opened in 1817 as the UK’s first public art gallery.

Image credit: Carmody Groarke

The redevelopment will see a new timber pavilion constructed in the gallery's gardens. Characterized by circular window openings and a timber reciprocal frame roof, the pavilion is intended to serve as a “warm, tactile space for children and families to enjoy.”

Model image credit: Richard Davies

The square form of the pavilion will be angled at 45 degrees to the historic gallery to “reinforce the relationship of the pavilion with the landscape and the two entrances to the site.” Inside, the reciprocal frame roof will filter natural daylight into the center of the cruciform plan, while natural copper canopies will “provide pla...

Carmody Groarke develops bricks made of city waste for museum facade in Ghent, Belgium

2022-11-18T04:00:00-05:00

Waste from the city of Ghent, Belgium, is being turned into the building blocks of a major cultural institution. For a renovation and expansion of the Design Museum Gent, an innovative new recycling process is turning old bits of broken concrete and glass into the bricks that will cover the museum’s exterior.

The Gent Waste Brick was designed by London-based practice Carmody Groarke in partnership with materials designers BC Materials and Local Works Studio. Together, they developed an energy-saving method that takes ground construction waste materials, mainly crushed concrete, masonry, and glass, from demolished buildings and infuses lime to form dry-cured bricks. This approach utilizes local materials rather than extracting clay or importing mass-produced bricks from elsewhere. As reported by Fast Company, the materials were collected mostly from within five miles of the museum.

The bricks are formed in a shipping container-sized mobile processor and then dry cure for 60 days, a much less energy-intensive process than traditional brick production. As a result, they will reportedly produce a third of the amount of carbon dioxide over a 60-year lifespan than a conventional brick. For the museum expansion, the Gent Waste Bricks will be used on the museum's facade, which is expected to co...

New video tells the story of a dissolving house saved by a record-breaking metal box

2022-02-10T11:47:00-05:00

In a rainy region of western Scotland, an architectural masterpiece has been given a new lease of life. Built in 1904, the Hill House is regarded as one of the most iconic residential homes to be designed by the famous architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. After over a century, however, the masterpiece mansion is feeling its age.

The Hill House Box, designed by Carmody Groarke, was completed in 2019. Now, a new video by British YouTuber Tom Scott offers new insights into the original building, the issue with its façade, and the architectural intervention undertaken to save it, including interviews with the building's managers.

Due to the wet, windy climate common to Scotland’s west coast, many buildings in the region are clad in a lime coating infused with small stones and pebbles. Once dried, the mixture forms a weatherproof layer to protect the building’s external walls from the elements. However, for the Hill House, Mackintosh departed from convention and replaced the lime coati...

Carmody Groarke preserves Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House with an encasement

2019-06-11T13:19:00-04:00

The work of Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh belongs to the early modernist period, along with that of Austria's Adolf Loos and California's Irving Gill. Though Mackintosh built very few projects during his career, the few that have survived have continued to be of great importance for modern architectural history.

Hill House, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.

Hill House, built in 1904 in the hills of Helensburgh, Scotland, is among the most significant. Designed by Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, the home rises from the landscape like a castle stripped of all ornament, a novel mix of the old and new worlds. The 115 year old home has been a popular tourist destination for years, though it had long been in serious need of preservation. The wet weather of Northern Scotland has been increasingly challenging for the Portland cement exterior, and calls for preservation proposals were made in 2017.

Hill House Box, by Carmody...