An Interview With Stephen Witherford of Witherford Watson Mann Architects

Von Chua:

You mentioned working closely with Westminster Council and the process was positive. Do you think this project was able to set a kind of precedent?

Stephen Witherford:

We’re quite a small scale practice; we’re not seeking to do large numbers of projects but we hope that doing fewer projects with a lot of ambition and skill, we are able to deliver buildings that change the way people think about things. Then other people can use these projects as a precedent. You can use fewer highly imaginative projects to influence the quality of what other people may seek to do. As an example, we completed a project in 2013 for Astley Castle, a ruin turned into a house which you can rent from the Landmark Trust. It’s extremely unusual because we’ve left most of it as a ruin - a lot of it is untouched. Indeed, if you pass around the edges of it, you might not even know that it is a new house inside. There are only some subtle clues. It is a bit like what happened at The Courtauld where we did intervene quite heavily - we made some quite destructive changes but by doing that, the new work created opportunities for a greater awareness of the old, suggesting new interpretations. The new work enabled continuity of use, it allowed for more people to engage in the building’s history.

...The Courtauld where we did intervene quite heavily - we made some quite destructive changes but by doing that, the new work created opportunities for a greater awareness of the old, suggesting new interpretations. The new work enabled continuity of use, it allowed for more people to engage in the building’s history.

- Stephen Witherford, Lead Director for The Courtauld’s Refurbishment

By making the changes to access and the integration of the different rooms, you can accommodate more visitors and enable them to spend more time there. You are enabling a closer relationship to these historic spaces. This is analogous to what The Courtauld does as an institution; searching to find insights into things, suggesting new interpretations - there’s an aspect of this taking place. There’s an aspect of this which is authored and edited, where you bring out certain aspects of the history, as much as you’re also reducing other readings at the same time. For example, the coal cellar walls and the small attic rooms that we removed were spaces visitors and students would never have been able to access. Now they are accessible areas, so each aspect of destruction also enables other things to happen. That was the balance we were trying to strike with Westminster Council and Historic England; to establish a major shift in the overall public benefit of the transformation.

Von Chua:

When I visited The Courtauld Gallery recently, I was particularly drawn to the lighting quality during my visit. Can you share what you and your team set out to achieve?

Stephen Witherford:

Once again, we usually search backwards to think forwards. Looking at the arrangement of the building, Chambers starts off on the earth with heavy brick vaults, then he works through the stone and the architectural orders, and then at the top is a world of ornate plasterwork, cornices and mouldings. Chambers followed a similar structure with natural light; there are two-storied lightwells which take light into the basement, one storey sunken courts light the lower ground floor, the windows around the ground and the first floor illuminate these rooms, and on the second floor are glazed lanterns to the sky. There is a whole structure of light in the building. There’s this whole idea that some of those spaces are almost external; the two staircases have internal windows treated as if they’re outside spaces. At the bottom of the old Royal Academy stairs, there is a rusticated screen which is like the outside of a building where you walk through to enter the stair. They’ve got glass lanterns at the top of the staircases. Natural light flows down which also gives them this external quality. At the top of the West stair, which was the old Royal Academy staircase, the architecture is treated like a belvedere, an open screen which looks out and over the stair as if it’s an outside space. There are some beautiful ideas in the natural light which structured the whole building, so we followed those principles because we understood them and they were very intact.

From the bottom of the old Royal Academy stairs at The Courtauld, London looking up to-wards the natural light flowing down and the rusticated screen at the bottom. Image by Von Chua.

We approached the artificial lighting in a way that worked with that structure of spaces. Where you have the most ornate rooms on the first floor - the Fine Rooms, we used very delicate suspended tracks which follow the geometry of the plasterwork, with small lights that light the paintings. In the second floor’s galleries, there is a combination of light tracks which are embedded into ceilings where they’re not historic, and suspended tracks following the historic cornices. The lighting is handled differently in each of the rooms and in relation to where the natural light is falling. That’s quite a subtle thing, unless you walked around just looking at those aspects, you might not notice it.

We approached the artificial lighting in a way that worked with that (Sir William Chambers’) structure of spaces…The lighting is handled differently in each of the rooms and in relation to where the natural light is falling.

- Stephen Witherford, Lead Director for The Courtauld’s Refurbishment

Natural lighting and delicate artificial lighting in the LVMH Great Room at The Courtauld, London. Image by Von Chua.

The proposed design provides the gallery team greater flexibility and control in terms of how they light the work or objects which are not on the walls. It’s a state of the art lighting arrangement in a historic building. With all that servicing, we had to think how do you put in contemporary systems for all the air control? What about thermal control, security, CCTVs, lighting, access and fire? How do you integrate all those into the historic fabric and not see any of it? That is where we had long hours of design time finding the small ways you can integrate those elements into the voids in the building, the old chimney flues, etc.

This careful integration is one of the important aspects of the building, so that it feels more open and porous, lighter to move around and more generous. We did not really generate any additional floor area but the building feels more spacious. It is to do with doors being held open and the integration of fire systems and security systems into them. These elements of the building work very hard. We spent a lot of time designing and finding the right strategies and components which can be concealed as much as possible. Then, the workmanship required to accommodate these things - there’s little dimensional tolerance, so you’re working to very high levels of craftsmanship and coordination. If it’s not thought about, it just doesn’t integrate in a seamless way - you’ll see it. That’s one aspect of the design which a lot of people did an enormous amount of work on. They’re normally not the people that you get to hear about but their work was really incredible.

Accommodating modern air-handling systems and services behind the historic building fabric at The Courtauld, London. Image courtesy of Stephen Witherford from Witherford Watson Mann Architects.

Von Chua:

Are there any opportunities to perhaps shine a light on the craftsmen?

Stephen Witherford:

There is a talk which I did on our website called ‘Out of Site’. Over two years of construction, I took a series of photos of the things that no one sees and the things that workmen and craftsmen do. (See link to the talk at the end of this article)

They’re not things that are often on our drawings, they’re not in our specifications, they’re the things that craftsmen do which you can never define because you don’t have their knowledge and skill - they realise a detail better than you can sometimes define it.

For a really good project to happen, and this was the case at The Courtauld, you want to build a collective vision that the different workmen combine to make, even though they do not know how their part fits into the whole. They’re just doing their part; the joiners are taking off the old doors, stripping them down, putting in all these new security and fire release mechanisms, reapplying the historic wood grain and rehanging the doors. They don’t know what that’s going to add up to, but they see this when it all comes together. Everyone put so much effort into realising their parts. They make things of a quality which we couldn’t necessarily define – it is one of the great outcomes of the project. The design team can only do so much, the way for a building to be really beautiful is for the people that make the actual work to become part of the project. You have to put in your time and effort in working with them closely for them to feel that they’re not just being instructed to do something. You’re working with them. It’s not something you ever get taught as an architect.

...you want to build a collective vision that the different workmen combine to make, even though they do not know how their part fits into the whole… They don’t know what that’s going to add up to but they can see this when it all comes together. Everyone put so much effort into realising their parts. They make things of a quality in ways which we couldn’t necessarily define – it is one of the great outcomes of the project.

- Stephen Witherford, Lead Director for The Courtauld’s Refurbishment

Particularly in a historic building where the dimensional tolerances are so tight, you continually discover things which you didn’t know were there. You really have to work together to resolve it. The workmen and craftsmen are going to be losing money, so you have to work it out together quickly and effectively in a way which almost improves the end result rather than compromises it.

One of the things at The Courtauld is that when your eye moves around spaces, it doesn’t feel lots of awkward things because your eyes always notice when things aren’t quite right even if you don’t know what it is. Part of the way we did that at The Courtauld was that we designed everything in rooms; each room has its own particular architecture, its own characteristics, and hardly any of the rooms are the same. We developed a family of details and you adjust them to suit the specific conditions. It is a kind of softening in a way, you avoid distinct clashes between the old and the new, you’re tailoring a new language to make sure it sits within the historic room well.

...we designed everything in rooms; each room has its own particular architecture, its own characteristics, hardly any of the rooms are the same. We developed a family of details and you adjust them to suit the specific conditions. It is a kind of softening in a way, you avoid distinct clashes between the old and the new, you’re tailoring a new language to make sure it sits within the historic room well.

- Stephen Witherford, Lead Director for The Courtauld’s Refurbishment