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Project: White Cube: Hoxton Square
Publication: Building Design
Date: October 2002
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The White Cube in Hoxton, east London, lives up to its name with a daring new glassy extension constructed from modular units. Amanda Birch reports. Photos by Morely von Sternberg.
Architects like to describe projects as being like a box within a box. But occasionally, something more visceral is needed. Mike Rundell describes his new extension to the White Cube art gallery in Hoxton Square, east London, as an "extrusion from the centre", adding: "It's as if the lining to the inside [of the original buildingl has been sucked out, like entrails." Graphic, but accurate.
Rundell, principal of MRJ Rundell & Associates, is the designer of the glassy box that has just sprouted from the top
of the former White Cube gallery. This £1.4 million cube, although it's more rectangular in shape, definitely has the
"wow" factor. It's unmissable. For one thing, it's the only glass extension amid the square's jumble of building types, which date from across the last two centuries. More unusually it is two storeys rather than as Rundell says, "another cliched single storey glass extension'. This last point is significant. Its impact is greater because of its height, which when viewed dose,
gives the impression of being top heavy. Although from a distance, the two parts (solid base and transparent top) seem to
be the right visual balance, the result - a silver ethereal box - is daring and head spinning. It was, after all the idea of owner and the UK's leading contemporary art dealer Jay Jopling to enlarge the building and you d have expected him to
make a head-craning statement:
Publication: Building Design
Date: October 2002
Download PDF
White Star
The White Cube in Hoxton, east London, lives up to its name with a daring new glassy extension constructed from modular units. Amanda Birch reports. Photos by Morely von Sternberg.
Architects like to describe projects as being like a box within a box. But occasionally, something more visceral is needed. Mike Rundell describes his new extension to the White Cube art gallery in Hoxton Square, east London, as an "extrusion from the centre", adding: "It's as if the lining to the inside [of the original buildingl has been sucked out, like entrails." Graphic, but accurate.
Rundell, principal of MRJ Rundell & Associates, is the designer of the glassy box that has just sprouted from the top
of the former White Cube gallery. This £1.4 million cube, although it's more rectangular in shape, definitely has the
"wow" factor. It's unmissable. For one thing, it's the only glass extension amid the square's jumble of building types, which date from across the last two centuries. More unusually it is two storeys rather than as Rundell says, "another cliched single storey glass extension'. This last point is significant. Its impact is greater because of its height, which when viewed dose,
gives the impression of being top heavy. Although from a distance, the two parts (solid base and transparent top) seem to
be the right visual balance, the result - a silver ethereal box - is daring and head spinning. It was, after all the idea of owner and the UK's leading contemporary art dealer Jay Jopling to enlarge the building and you d have expected him to
make a head-craning statement:
