A considerable row has sprung up concerning Selldorf Architects' controversial revamp of the National Gallery's Sainsbury Wing after one of its original co-designers, Denise Scott Brown, made comments over the weekend indicating a disagreement and lack of support for the currently under-review proposal. 

"She’s making our building look like a circus clown," Scott Brown told The Guardian's James Tapper without elaborating on which specific elements the already widely-opposed plans she has an issue with. "There are elements of tragedy – circus clowns are made up to look happy, but they’re not. This is a circus clown wearing a tutu."

Selldorf had previously mentioned in an April New York Times preview of her MOCA San Diego makeover and in another Architects Journal update from August that she had spoken with Scott Brown about both projects. During our coverage of the Sainsbury Wing in October, Seldorf said, "she has been counseled by the wing's original co-architect Denise Scott Brown over the proposed design [...] The firm has also stated that its amended design was 'made as a result of stakeholder feedback.'"

Scott Brown also shared criticisms with Tapper related to Selldorf’s execution of the equally contested MOCA design. These concerns for which she claims the architect took "no notice of" despite having allocated a week of office time "to go through the rationale behind the designs so that she could expand the museum sympathetically."

In refusing them, the committee should urge the applicants to understand the provisions of the original architect using any such advice as they may require to do so and bring forward a scheme that better secures the considerable architectural thought that informed the original work.

Go back to what we first had and take a look at it. The chosen architect in their accepting the refusal should find means to understand the reasoning I have described here and using their own design preferences still obey those useful rules about helping people to see the things that they need to see.

The chosen architect in accepting the refusal should return to the original plans and try to understand what they stood for and then interpret them in their own way. It should be important that they meet the same fundamental criteria that we met.

Without this, the intervention is arbitrary, meaningless, and not grounded in a proper and respectful understanding of the role of access in this museum. They should be exceptionally pleased to have the opportunity of working with a building of the highest level of listing and of not traducing that standard by what they do as it will affect all future cathedrals.

Only 2.5% of listed buildings are listed at Grade 1. Of these there can be only a very tiny number where the original architect is still living, and crucially willing to freely engage and advise upon such significant interventions.

She concludes the essay by stating, "What this architect does now in this Grade 1 Listed Building could endanger all the others." A decision from the planning committee is expected by the end of the year.