The transformation of the British Museum from solemn dowager to a vibrant urban oasis happened rather quickly by museum standards. The trustees initiated an open selection process to find an architectural firm to develop a scheme that would address the commercial needs of a modern museum while respecting the original architecture. In July 1994, the museum appointed Foster & Partners as the architect. Norman Foster’s 40-year career is distinguished by high-profile, award-winning commissions. The reconstruction of the Reichstag in Berlin, the Hong Kong International Airport, to name a few, have etched his architectural reputation in stone, glass and steel.
The millennial year culminated with the opening of the Great Court at the British Museum – Foster’s glamorous restoration to glory of Robert Smirke’s Greek Revivalist courtyard and of his brother Sydney’s famous round reading room, and the addition to the courtyard of a billowing glass roof.
Foster’s scheme has interpreted the museum’s vision perfectly. Arising from the "marriage of function and form" it proposed a glorious new fulcrum. To achieve this, Smirke’s courtyard was cleared of bookstacks, and the facades were restored. The round reading room, once closed to everyone without a reader’s ticket, was restored and reopened to the general public. It is surrounded by an elliptical structure providing two lecture theaters and seminar rooms for a new educational center, a shop on the ground floor and a restaurant on the top.
Here’s a tip: Approach the British Museum from the south. This way, you will pass through the new formal landscaping and, once inside, you’re in for a more spectacular entrance to the Great Court than if you’d entered from the quieter north.
Built to fill the vacuum created when the national library vacated its maze of offices a couple of years ago, the Great Court is indisputably an impressive piece of architecture. Part backward-looking, part forward-looking engineering marvel, this new space has generally been received with acclaim.
Praise, however, has not been universal. Firstly, because the court was masterminded by the prolific Norman Foster, often accused of neglecting context in favor of corporate modernism and unthinking internationalism. Secondly, because of the furor over "the wrong type of stone" in the rebuilding.
There’s an element of truth behind both these objections. There is indeed something shiny, slick and even airport-like in the overall tone of the place. The new stone is obviously not a perfect match – but how much this matters is up to the degree of cynicism and pedantry in which visitors wish to indulge themselves.
The history of the Great Court is the same old one of walls and spaces, removal and demolition, partial reconstruction and changes in use, that has turned monuments into equally complex structures which some people apparently see as machines to be moved around at will.
When Robert Smirke was commissioned in 1832 to give permanent form to the museum created in 1753, he used austere architecture to recreate a Greek setting – almost an extended domus with rooms surrounding a leafy peristyle – for visitors eager to see the Parthenon friezes.
Despite its collection, the British Museum was never entirely an art or archaeology museum, but rather a historical museum eager to mine the immense anthropological richness of all human civilization.
Taking more than 25 years to build and completed in 1848, the British Museum was conceived as four wings surrounding an inner garden. Soon considered to be an appalling waste of space, architects queued up with plans to fill it in. But the museum’s chief librarian, Antonio Panizzi, was to prevail – his giant reading room was duly erected in the 1850s.
The round reading room, haunt of George Orwell, Virginia Woolf and Karl Marx (to name a few), remains the focal point of the courtyard and is accessed by a door so small, humble and inoffensive it has all the hallmarks of an architectural joke. The punchline being, I suppose, something about judging a book by its cover.
Painstakingly restored and back to its original blue and gold interior, this protected Victorian masterpiece dictated most of the design strategies adopted by Foster and Partners. Awkwardly, it did not turn out to be in the center of the courtyard, forcing the architects to adopt an asymmetrical roof.
Foster’s scheme had the apparent simplicity of Columbus’ egg, and his impressive technical and diplomatic track record in dealing with the constraints and rigidities of old buildings was reassuring. In particular, the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy, were proof of his ability to make the most of every available nook and cranny in building the place which, for historical or artistic reasons, was considered untouchable.
In deciding to turn the court into a piazza, he had first to reckon with the embarrassment of a Reading Room which, for the first time in its history, was revealed not just as an interior, but also as an architectural volume with an exterior.
Foster was successful in overcoming the obstacles posed by the bare structure of the Reading Room stripped of all the rooms and stacks. Books began to accumulate around it like a cocoon around a chrysalis in the second half of the 19th century.
The original building, too, was a problem. The porticos on each of the inward-facing facades are all of different heights, requiring further asymmetry in a roof which has become mind-boggling in its complexity. Wrapped around the reading room, the roof bends, twists and warps over the great court in a way that would have been impossible without computer-aided design. Consisting of more than 3,300 glass triangles, no two of which are alike, the roof is a triumph. It even sits comfortably with the Victorian stonework. Neckache is virtually guaranteed.
Matching the limestone in rebuilding the south portico caused the biggest headache. The British Museum was built from Portland stone, but inexplicably, the architects chose to specify "oolitic limestone, Portland-based, or similar." What they got was "similar", leading to uproar in the press and idle threats from English Heritage that the 2,000-ton structure would have to be pulled down. Once in the courtyard, turn around and see what all the fuss is about.
The south side of the courtyard remains largely uncluttered, while a new structure (containing much-improved shops, a useful exhibition space and a stylish restaurant) has been added to the north side of the reading room. There’s also a handy third-floor bridge connecting to the Mesopotamian and Egyptian Galleries.
It would be no surprise to discover that 90 per cent of the L100 million budget was expended on the roof, but sadly it appears that an equal proportion of time and imagination went the same way. The new Joseph Hotung Gallery, for example, is bland and uninspiring. Perhaps the design team, unsure of how to handle a rotating display of artefacts up to 10,000 years old, felt too intimidated to conjure up anything but cheap, retail architecture.
The steel and glass café, arranged in minimalist strips in the northern corners of the courtyard, is clearly bolt-on extras. The signage, shops and information posts share this utilitarian, pared-down aesthetic.
But this is nit-picking. The British Museum has just got a lot more. The steel-and-glass roof which floats above the two-acre courtyard, creates the largest covered courtyard in Europe. Foster’s concept of a light, transparent canopy with a breathtaking 800-ton roof that appears to hover unsupported in the sky is truly breathtaking. Its undulating form defers to the original architecture as it billows up and over the quadrangle walls, keeping a respectful distance from the entablatures.
With the roof and restoration, planning and execution, Foster has created a masterpiece. He brings the past into the present without disturbing its ghosts or offending its predecessors. While he resurrected the original public courtyard, he reinvented it as a modern, animated, urban space. A second phase will turn the North Library into the new Ethnology Galleries. A north-south axis will provide a coherent pedestrian corridor from Great Russell Street through the Great Court to the North Library. Completion is due in 2003.