RIBA Journal, March 1997

Arts and Croft's

by John Welsh

Thomas Croft's motto could be 'the less intervention the better'.
A gallery for Tim Taylor has provided the perfect opportunity to
test his belief.

The pre-renovated building had a chequered history, starting life as a hayloft, and surviving central London real estate pressure until 1952, when it first became an art gallery. That closed in 1965, and 1 Bruton Place became a storeroom.

Tim Taylor had been trying to find a venue for a gallery to sell post-war artists such as Lucian Freud, Howard Hodgkin and Francis Bacon. By sheer fluke, he was in the estate agency four days before the building's lease expired. Then he looked for an architect.

The client's and architect's paths first crossed paths while Croft
was working for Rick Mather. Croft was 'job captain' on the Cork
Street, central London, gallery of Leslie Waddington, for whom Taylor
had worked. The recommendation of a friend-of-a-friend - who said
Croft's architectural approach was ideal - finally persuaded Taylor.

The art world has long thought architects create buildings for
the sake of the design, not the paintings. But when confronted with
the old building, Croft argues that 'demolition can be the most
creative part of the design process'.

The original building rises into a pitched roof, the original trusses still in place. Half the building was a double - height space, with a mezzanine creating two storeys of accommodation.

Croft created open-plan offices from dingy rooms under the mezzanine. The rest of the gallery is exhibition space. The walls are painted a simple white and the original floors are sanded and varnished. Two gestures sort out the circulation. First, a wall starts behind the front door, extends seamlessly along a corridor and is resolved in the gallery space, linking the entrance to the gallery with an abstract white plane. The second is a frameless window between the mezzanine and the double - height gallery that allows full views between the two spaces.

It ends up as the ideal backdrop for Taylor's brand of post-war paintings. And it works because the paintings hang just as they would be in a tasteful home.

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