High Culture
Project: Louise T Blouin Institute
Location: 3 Olaf Street, London, W11 4BE
Architect: Borgos Dance
Bricks: Wienerberger - Engineering Brick
The project was one of restoration and refurbishment, unravelling changes and imagining a more ordered facade
The building that is now the Louise T Blouin Institute was originally used by Hooper’s, the coachbuilder to Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Daimler. Since its heyday the building had deteriorated and architect Borgos Dance faced the challenge of revitalising it to fulfil its new function.
The brief required the building to be given a further projected 60 years of life, tackling years of neglect, superficial repointing, rising damp and failing parapets. The design needed to meet two requirements – to create a dynamic backdrop for the viewing of art from both established and emerging contemporary artists and to house the Louise T Blouin Foundation’s London headquarters.
The foundation seeks to encourage a better understanding of foreign affairs and culture beyond borders through international co-operation, exchange and dialogue for the 21st century; and to explore the broader practical significance of creativity and the creative potential of the human brain. The Louise T Blouin Institute is unique as an arts centre: it is neither a publicly funded gallery nor a commercial gallery. Rather, it is one of the largest nongovernment funded, non-commercial cultural spaces in London.
The existing 3250m2, three-storey warehouse building is located on Olaf Street between Shepherds Bush and Holland Park in Notting Hill. In past years, it has been used by design and advertising companies, which led to a number of fit-outs in the mid-1980s and 1990s. It was necessary to reinstate the original open-plan nature of the warehouse in order to maximise the space available for exhibiting art for the foundation.
First and foremost, the project was one of restoration and refurbishment, unravelling the many changes that had been made over the years and imagining a more symmetrical and ordered facade. This entailed rebuilding entire load-bearing masonry piers, lifting arches to align with their neighbours, correcting brick coursing and deflecting arches over the greater percentage of windows, all with the aim of creating purer and more balanced elevations. The entire north corner, tower included, was largely rebuilt from the ground up.
Simultaneously with these works, a completely new concrete and steel structure had to be inserted to create the generous and environmentally controlled spaces that were required. In particular, the reconstruction of floors and internal structures supported by new internal foundations required considerable care in the sequencing of the brickwork’s temporary engineering relative to the new steelwork.
With Arup Engineering, the team removed all columns from the ground floor, using Macalloy steel bars to suspend the lightweight concrete floors from two 27m long by 2.5m high roof trusses. Load transfer to these new structures was achieved by jack stressing the hanging structure into position and retrieving the load from the ground floor columns.
The ground floor houses the main public areas, which include a triple-height space, an exhibition space and a courtyard cafe that are open to the general public. The first and second floors have been dedicated to offices and flexible spaces for the foundation's activities.
All 80 of the existing external windows were reused, with each window lit from within. Borgos Dance worked with US artist James Turrell to create two permanent lighting installations – the first illuminating all the external windows and the second lighting an architectural translucent screen at roof level. The windows can either be controlled individually or as a whole, along with the roof, to create changing artwork on the exterior of the building. The result is a dramatic space internally and externally to showcase both the building itself and the exhibitions within.