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Oldham Metropolitan

Borough Council

2,770 m2

£7.0 million

1999-2002

RIBA Award for Architecture

2002, Manchester Civic

Society Award 2002, Civic

Trust Award 2004,

RIBA Awards Access Award

finalist.

Top: lighting baffle with slot

of roof glazing above

Middle: link between existing

listed building and gallery

Bottom: lighting design for

public staircases by Peter

Freeman

“PRS has designed an upside-down building, with the main attraction on the top floor. As at Peckham, this top-floor event is conspicuously signposted by a bizarre architectural form that is quite alien to the Victorian landscape ... although the architectural styling may be provocative, the overall form of the new building fits remarkably snugly into its surroundings. ”Martin Spring – Building magazine

Gallery Oldham, together with existing cultural buildings forms the first phase of a new Cultural Quarter in Oldham. The brief called for a building that generated a strong presence, and established a sense of place where people of all ages, ethnic groups and backgrounds could gather together as part of the arts-led urban and social regeneration of the town.

The new gallery comprises a 10 metre deep inhabited wall extending behind the library and local history museum, gathering them together around a remodelled garden, a forecourt to the gallery and a forum in the heart of the Quarter.

The building provides four levels of column free space, the upper three coinciding with the floor levels of the adjacent library. Plant rooms, workshops and delivery access are at lower ground level.

At the centre of the ground floor the double height entrance foyer is presented as an extension of the garden forecourt and contains a visitor desk a shop and huge lifts that carry large

groups of visitors up to the galleries. The entrance foyer is flanked on both sides by the education facilities and a terraced cafe.

The first floor contains a fine art store and curatorial and administration accommodation. On the second floor the three new galleries are arranged in line, separated by the lift and stair lobbies, one of which extends as a bridge link to the existing library galleries. The galleries at either end are roof-lit with a suspended baffle diffusing daylight into the space and deflecting it onto exposed pre-cast concrete planks. The thermal mass of the exposed structure and conglomerate floor tiles stabilise the gallery environment preventing sudden fluctuations of temperature. Conditioned air introduced via a raised floor, rises with the stack effect and is extracted via a ‘glass’ duct beneath the roof-light.

Specially commissioned artworks have been incorporated into the project to great effect including the glass test-tube chandelier in the foyer by the Art Department.

Front elevation showing

entrance from library gardens

Rear elevation showing

delivery bay

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Above: second floor top-lit

galleries

Far left: view across library

gardens

Left: entrance and foyer

“The new gallery .... sets out to give the collection the setting it deserves. There are proper, climate-controlled galleries that, for the first time, make it possible to bring major exhibitions to Oldham, and, equally importantly, good storage facilities. The result is a platform for the curators who see the gallery as somewhere that can bring the people of Oldham together.”Giles Worsley – Daily Telegraph

Below: night view of entrance

across the library gardens

“Gallery Oldham has been a big hit. It’s used for lots of community cohesion events but the best thing is that there’s a real feeling that the building is owned by all the community. There’s no ‘them or us’ mentality. If there’s more interaction, more sharing, there’s less chance of the kind of thing we saw two years ago ever happening again. ”Mohammed Azam – Building Magazine

Below: axonometric diagram

showing gallery as the

first new component in

the Cultural Quarter

Second floor galleries and link

to existing building

First floor archives, stores and

back of house

Ground level café, education

area and public facilities.

Dotted area shows future site

of the library and Lifelong

Learning Centre.