Image Credit : Alan Williams
Project Overview
Ptolemy Dean Architects has added a star-shaped tower to London's Westminster Abbey, the most significant addition to the building since 1745.
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Project Brief
Standing at seven stories tall, the £23 million Weston Tower is a modern take on gothic, being described as both 'sci-fi gothic' and 'steampunk gothic'.
The tower has been built to provide access to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, and opened early June 2018. The exhibition space is situated in the abbey's previously rarely-visited triforium – a space that runs around the upper perimeter of the interior and could previously only be reached via a steep, cramped staircase. It [the triforium] provides breath-taking views across the abbey, enabling its architecture to be seen without the obstruction of monuments and furnishings and thereby readily understood.
The stair is situated on a small patch of land referred to as the Poet's Yard, which lies between the existing 16th-century Lady Chapel and the 13th-century Chapter House. As building an internal stair would have damaged the building's historic fabric the Westminster Abbey decided to create an external access route to tree new exhibition spaces.
The steel-frame tower is composed of two stacked square volumes, one of which has been rotated at a 45-degree angle to create a star-shaped floor plate. This is intended as a visual nod towards the star motifs seen on the decorative altar screens of St Faith's Chapel and on the stained glass windows of the the abbey.
At the peak of the new addition sits a steel crown. This has been designed in reference to the crossing tower of Cambridgeshire's 11th-century Ely Cathedral, which is topped by a faceted light-emitting structure called a lantern.
At the centre of the tower is a lift, designed to accommodate disabled visitors and carers. Around it wraps a dog-leg oak staircase, which is illuminated by patterned panels of glazing that have been inserted between the towers's steel columns.
original article @ www.dezeen.com/2018/06/08/westminster-abbey-ptolemy-dean-architects-steampunk-gothic-tower-architecture/
Architecture - Cultural
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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