On June 30th 2017, the transformation of the main courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London was inaugurated. It was Amanda Levete, founding architect of the firm AL_A based in London, who won the competition in 2011 for what is the most important intervention on this museum in 100 years.

The modernization program of the Victoria and Albert Museum included a new exhibition gallery underground, below the courtyard. The firm AL_A put forth a project with the underground gallery below a new courtyard which redefines the relationship between the museum and the public space of the street, creating a new entrance for the building. The guiding line of the project : “making visible the invisible “, in the architect’s own words.

The Sackler Courtyard is the first porcelain courtyard in the world, covered on 1 200 square meters by 11 000 handmade tiles, taking inspiration from the tradition of ceramic art in the museum. From this courtyard, new views were opened on architectural facades never seen before, which allows one to appreciate previously ignored details such as the sgraffito decoration (a Renaissance technique) on the facade of the Henry Cole wing.

The entrance to the museum from the street, the 1909 Aston Webb Screen, was transformed in a colonnade to better reveal the building from the outside.

The courtyard covers the new Sainsbury Gallery, a 1 100 square meters and 10,5 meters high underground space. Its ceiling follows a triangular pattern allowing a 38 meters cantilever without a single column.

The underground excavation that this new gallery needed became an engineering challenge because of the extreme closeness of the adjacent building. Furthermore, the museum stayed open to the public during the project’s progress.

The staircase leading to the gallery was placed in the existing Western Range building, rather than the courtyard, so that the project fully belongs in the origin building, and is not seen as an extension.

Discover the project described by the architect in this video.

From the architect’s press release

Project : V&A Exhibition Road Quarter
Architects : AL_A
Clients : Victoria & Albert Museum
Surface : 6 400 m2
Contruction : 2013 – 2017
Opening : June 2017