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Project: White Cube: Mason's Yard
Publication: The Guardian
Date: 19th October 2006
Link: Guardian Website
Jonathan Glancey on two striking new art galleries making extraordinary use of light
What kind of space best suits contemporary art? Two new art galleries in London suggest there is no obvious solution, although both - the Louise T Blouin Institute and White Cube - are obsessed with the quality of light, whether natural or artificial.
Some miles to the east of the institute is Jay Jopling's new White Cube gallery. This third incarnation of the famous Britart gallery is a modern monolith, a crisp-edged, geometric, four-storey, white-and-silver steel and concrete block in Mason's Yard, St James's. Where the Louise T Blouin Institute poses happily for photographs, White Cube is harder to frame. It neither lights up at night, nor calls for attention. On first encounter, the mausoleum-like interior appears to consist of little more than a tall reception area and two warehouse-sized galleries. Closer inspection reveals one of the most remarkable new galleries of recent times, a surprisingly generous art space set deep underground, yet appearing to be bathed in daylight.
This ingenious play of real and artificial light is the work of architects MRJ Rundell & Associates and Douglas James of Minds Eye 3D Lighting Design. On one side of the cavernous underground gallery - currently inhabited by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco's decorated cast whale skeleton - daylight filters down from a room-long skylight. On the other, a matching skylight is electrically lit. Not that you would ever know. The play between the two light sources is intriguing.
Publication: The Guardian
Date: 19th October 2006
Link: Guardian Website
The living daylight
Jonathan Glancey on two striking new art galleries making extraordinary use of light
What kind of space best suits contemporary art? Two new art galleries in London suggest there is no obvious solution, although both - the Louise T Blouin Institute and White Cube - are obsessed with the quality of light, whether natural or artificial.
Some miles to the east of the institute is Jay Jopling's new White Cube gallery. This third incarnation of the famous Britart gallery is a modern monolith, a crisp-edged, geometric, four-storey, white-and-silver steel and concrete block in Mason's Yard, St James's. Where the Louise T Blouin Institute poses happily for photographs, White Cube is harder to frame. It neither lights up at night, nor calls for attention. On first encounter, the mausoleum-like interior appears to consist of little more than a tall reception area and two warehouse-sized galleries. Closer inspection reveals one of the most remarkable new galleries of recent times, a surprisingly generous art space set deep underground, yet appearing to be bathed in daylight.
This ingenious play of real and artificial light is the work of architects MRJ Rundell & Associates and Douglas James of Minds Eye 3D Lighting Design. On one side of the cavernous underground gallery - currently inhabited by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco's decorated cast whale skeleton - daylight filters down from a room-long skylight. On the other, a matching skylight is electrically lit. Not that you would ever know. The play between the two light sources is intriguing.
