Purcell Monograph

Place, time, architecture

Purcell

Origins Founded in 1947, Purcell started life in post-war Britain and gained a strong reputation for restoring buildings, including those for the Church and the army in East Anglia.

Donovan Purcell was appointed as Surveyor to the Fabric of Ely Cathedral in 1960, where the firm still works today.

In 1965 he went into partnership with architect Peter Miller and graphic designer William ‘Bill’

Tritton and, three years on, the notable architect Corinne Bennett joined and bolstered the practice’s conservation offer. It is from these origins that we have continued to develop our core disciplines and expertise in architecture, heritage consultancy and masterplanning.

In setting out this picture of Purcell, we thought we would start with some memories from the archive…

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Magdalene in Ickleton, 1970s 7. Corinne Bennett working on Winchester Cathedral, 1980s 8. Jane Kennedy and the team at Ely Cathedral in 1992 Front cover and this page: copyright held by Purcell unless otherwise stated

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1, 2. Donovan Purcell at Oxburgh Hall 1966 3. Donovan Purcell, Cambridge Stone, 1967 4. Bill Tritton exhibition design, 1960s 5. Donovan Purcell and team at Necton Church in Swaffham, 1970s 6. Peter Miller and team up the steeple of St Mary

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Introduction 02 Place, time, architecture Jeremy Melvin Essay 06 Sharing expertise Tom Brigden and Rowenna Wood As the former Senior Editor of the Architectural Review, it has been my privilege to commission this supplement for Purcell.

I spent more than 15 years writing in the AR’s pages about architecture’s polar opposites, reviewing the work of the world’s most renowned headline-hitting architects and introducing a new generation of scarcely known emerging talent, beavering always in distant corners.

I joined Purcell in 2016 shortly before its 70th anniversary as I was attracted by an equally diverse landscape of work. As a scholar of the Festival of Britain (AR January 2000), I loved the fact that Purcell had grown up in the context of post-war Britain, sharing the spirit of its age with collaborative and caring organisations such as the United Nations and Britain’s National Health Service. This spirit endures in Purcell’s mission, focusing its expertise then and now on bringing continuity to the lives of people and their places.

Remarkably this is Purcell’s first-ever monograph; it is introduced by the practice’s chairman Andrew Clark and its CEO Mark Goldspink. I hope you enjoy it and take the opportunity to explore more at www.purcelluk.com.

Rob Gregory, Associate, Purcell

Case study: Place 10 Cardigan Castle Rob Gregory Essay 12 By their buildings shall ye know them Paul Finch Case study: Time 16 Auckland Castle Alexander Holton Essay 18 Typologies crumble but buildings live on Ken Powell Case study: Architecture 22 National Maritime Museum Jess McCulloch Essay 24 Stonemasons, chisels, BIM and beyond Hugh Pearman Essay 28 It’s all architecture to us...

Jon Wright and David Hills 32 Key projects and awards

When our founder, Donovan Purcell, opened his office in Bury St Edmunds in 1947 he could hardly have imagined how his fledgling architectural practice would evolve in the decades to come.

More than 70 years later, Purcell has developed into a strong team of architects, masterplanners and heritage consultants who focus their unique mix of skills on the rich variety of places in which we are fortunate to work.

Our approach has always been collaborative, whether it’s with each other, with buildings and places or with other consultants and architects. This includes the wide range of committed clients without whom our work would not be possible.

We are many voices who come together with enthusiasm to speak deeply about how stories from the past and aspirations for sustainable futures contribute to our quality of life in the present.

We consider ourselves to be privileged custodians of both the places we are asked to study, repair, design and repurpose, and the practice, with its long history, that continues to develop in exciting ways.

Presented here is a picture of our work that we believe catches something of the legacy and spirit that unifies and inspires us today.

Andrew Clark Chairman Mark Goldspink CEO

1. Purcell designed and delivered the new hangar at Aerospace Bristol, tailor made and purpose built for Concorde Alpha Foxtrot, the last to be built and to fly 2. Purcell’s Liz Smith and Harriet Pullman inspecting the dome of Sydney Smirke’s British Museum Reading Room 2

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Place, time, architecture Understanding the unique nature of heritage has allowed Purcell to develop a consistent, rigorous approach to design in context, writes Jeremy Melvin

first publication, its diplomatic endeavours are explored in its own words by crossdisciplinary experts. Architect Tom Brigden and heritage consultant Rowenna Wood describe missions in conservation at home and abroad, while heritage consultant Jon Wright and architect David Hills discuss how conservation philosophy is becoming increasingly dependent on understanding architectural design intent.

Brigden and Wood outline contextual complexities associated with one of the practice’s largest and most unique conservation plans, written for the British territories in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. Unsurprisingly in this forbidding, barely inhabited zone, there was no buildings conservation policy or

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f the past is another country, heritage is its diplomatic mission to the present, our conduit for various forms of history from hard matter, incomplete archives and collective memories. Purcell partner, Liz Smith, characterises heritage as ‘the continuing history of everything’, and so it lies at the root of all Purcell does in three core disciplines of architecture, heritage consultancy and masterplanning.

From the practice’s origins in the 1940s, through its incarnation as Purcell Miller Tritton, and with a reputation for conserving great gothic cathedrals, it has helped create an interface between a growing interest in historic buildings and the expanding scope of legislation around them. In this capacity, it has assumed those diplomatic heritage obligations in forging links between communities and policy, hard (and hard-to-decipher) facts and soft ones, and building physics.

This nexus puts a twist on Purcell’s definition of architectural practice – it gives clients much more than a design by focusing, first and foremost, on fulfilling needs in a way that meets people’s aspirations. These needs can stem from the condition of a building’s fabric or a community’s wishes.

The architect’s ambassadorial role involves representing these varying needs and mediating between the forces behind them.

More often, diplomacy sets up subtle, insightful and sympathetic collaboration to resolve what might initially seem to be irreconcilable problems. In this, Purcell’s 2

legislation (though there is a slowly growing recognition that the heritage of whaling and exploration is worth recording, if not always preserving). After a small team spent days measuring sheds and stores in outfits to protect them from asbestos, Purcell proposed that the sites be digitally scanned so that a record of the sheds and stores could made available anywhere. The team then embarked on a six-day voyage across the stormy Southern Ocean back to civilization, and wrote the policies that exist today.

Wright and Hill’s essay concludes the narrative, discussing how this trailblazing work could be extended to include the conservation of seminal 20th-century buildings, as the practice is demonstrating greater agility in jumping between construction techniques and design philosophies that are centuries apart. This was a skill perhaps most clearly tested in a unique, but significant, collaboration between different types of construction, evident at the British Museum in the dome of Sydney Smirke’s British Museum Reading Room of 1857 and Foster + Partners’ roof of the Great Court, which encloses it. Smirke used cast iron and, for the ceiling, that stalwart of Victorian interiors and furnishings, papier mâché; Foster, as much a creature of his time, used glass and parabolic steel ribs. The problem is they respond differently to climatic conditions – Purcell had to use its polyvalent knowledge of construction technology to find a balance that works for both.

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Three further themes are also explored within these pages, with Paul Finch writing on identity (page 12), Ken Powell on typology (page 16), and Hugh Pearman on tradition and innovation (page 24).

Masterminding collaboration

The practice’s approach to collaboration goes beyond the profession’s standard engagement with engineers, cost consultants, other professionals and statutory bodies.

For Purcell, collaboration is everything, a vital part of its modus operandi because the diplomatic connotations of heritage define the nature of its interactions with other parties in particular ways. Its relationships with local communities, for example, are heavily coloured by the nature of the heritage in question, while its broad experience opens up the possibility of collaboration – or at least an exchange of ideas – between different buildings. All this makes for a tangled skein, which we illustrate with three core case studies that, in their own way, demonstrate Purcell’s enduring collaboration with place, time and architecture.

Cardigan Castle (page 10), a magnificent if remote medieval structure commanding the lower reaches of the River Teifi in Wales, shows how Purcell’s ability to lead collaboration with an extremely broad community of stakeholders can define aspirations and meet needs that, ultimately, result in sustainable economic proposition.

Partner Niall Phillips remembers the first approach by a retired GP, the local vet and a 4

bookkeeper, who wanted to bring the castle into the service of the community but had little idea how to do it. He subtly took the lead in constructing a collaboration framework and identified emerging aspirations, turning them into genuine possibilities defined by funding, the bounds of the historic fabric and the legislation protecting it. Here, Purcell’s new glass restaurant rests enticingly between two massive medieval walls, establishing another ‘collaboration’ between old and new, with further threads running through the built fabric to the social and economic context.

Another castle project – this time by Purcell with Niall McLaughlin and SANAA – inspired a different collaborative outcome at the site of the Bishop of Durham’s historic residence at Auckland Castle (page 16). Purcell’s conservation plan for the town creates a context for new buildings; here, the practice mediates, perhaps to the point of invisibility, collaborations between old and new.

And third in this trilogy, the National Maritime Museum (page 22) demonstrates different extremes of community collaboration, with Purcell satisfying both the local community in Greenwich and the world community as affected by Britain’s maritime history. The scheme improves circulation around the 19th-century structures that were not designed as a museum. In this instance, the firm developed and delivered a new entrance and café, which picks up footfall from visitors to Greenwich Park and the Observatory. In this

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3. Before breaking ground for the new Purcelldesigned Concorde Alpha Foxtrot hangar, contributors and community members traced out the plane’s iconic form 4,5,6. A trio of Purcell case studies describe three modes of collaboration at Cardigan Castle (page 10), Auckland Castle (page 16) and the National Maritime Museum (page 22) 7. Purcell’s new gallery building extends Percy Thomas’s recently listed buildings at St Fagans National Museum of History 8. Community action – the start of Purcell’s 13-year engagement with Arnos Vale Cemetery that continues today 9. Clifton Cathedral, Bristol – the youngest and most recent addition to Purcell’s portfolio of cathedral projects

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context, the building provides a coherent frame so the diverse objects can collaborate in telling a credible and engaging story.

Masterplanning change

Beyond these recent and ongoing case studies, other projects demonstrate Purcell’s fluency in masterplanning and managing change in complex contexts. These projects demand commitment for periods of time that extend well beyond those of conventional appointments.

Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol is a place where many locals have a great uncle, granny or third cousin four times removed in the ground so community connections are many, strong and varied. Purcell became involved, galvanising locals outraged at proposals to redevelop the 45-acre site, metamorphosing that outrage into a positive direction that unlocked sweat equity, local funders and, ultimately, the Heritage Lottery Fund, which provided just enough to restore several Grade-II* buildings, cut back the undergrowth, mow the grass to a certain distance from the roadways, restore the Raja’s tomb and introduce a small, elegant and unashamedly contemporary café alongside the neoclassical former crematorium. Not surprisingly it took some time to evolve, running for 13 years.

Alongside the expert repair of 18thcentury masonry, Purcell’s new steel and glass building is subtly contextualised with terraces, including a lift and stairway to the crematorium’s basement, where visitors can enjoy a small exhibition and peer at the

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‘ Purcell played an important role in supporting the museum in its Heritage Lottery Fund Round 2 bid, which was successful in securing an HLF grant of £12m’ Mark Richards, Director General and Director of Operations, National Museum Wales

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of more great cathedrals than anyone since George Gilbert Scott. Today, this tradition of stewardship is maintained by Chris Cotton and Jonathan Deeming (Durham and Canterbury Cathedrals respectively).

All this shows that a common thread to Purcell’s varied body of work lies in teasing out new aspects of heritage and presenting it in imaginative ways. Understanding how history relates to communal identity, and the technical processes needed to preserve and adapt historic fabric, allows the practice to animate the relationships in various strands of heritage, form collaborations between them and add award-winning new buildings to create experiences that are intriguing, satisfying and empathetic.

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macabre remains of the furnace and bone7 crusher that sped up the process of ‘ashes to ashes’. Meanwhile, lightly restored, the former funerary chapel above has become one of Bristol’s most popular wedding venues, giving a modern take on the old vow of ‘til death do us part’.

The Aerospace Bristol museum also took many years and, growing out of the firm’s initial conservation management plan, shows how opportunism and accident play a part in creating a heritage-focused visitor attraction. Here, people who shared a passion for Bristol’s long history of aircraft production had assembled a wide-ranging collection of its artefacts and were looking for a place to display them to the public. A century-old hangar on Filton Airfield, redundant for modern planes but listed because of its magnificent Belfast trusses, 8 became available – on condition that the last flying Concorde, then grounded and stored on adjacent land, would receive a fitting home on site. Adding what is probably (with the Spitfire) Britain’s most famous flying machine to the collection was a challenge and a boon. While the existing hangars set a powerful frame around which the exhibits could be organised, Concorde’s distinctive form determined the shape of its new other architectural works, Clifton does award-winning enclosure, designed within deserve to be better known – it is superb. extremely tight margins by Purcell.

Based on a hexagonal unit, it brings While quicker in delivery, St Fagans sanctuary and seats, clergy and congregation National Museum of History in Wales is together with mysterious light, ringed by a another example of heritage reaching into, series of crude but moving concrete reliefs and helping to define, national identity depicting the 14 Stations of the Cross. across multiple generations. Founded in Purcell’s cathedral portfolio undoubtedly 1948 with a series of reconstructed rural remains one of the jewels in its crown. buildings from across Wales, and modelled Initiated by founder Donovan Purcell, when on Skansen in Stockholm and other he was appointed as Surveyor to the Fabric Scandinavian open-air museums, it acquired at Ely Cathedral in 1960, several subsequent a new building in the 1970s; designed by partners have extended this legacy: John Percy Thomas Partnership this housed Burton was the first person since the 1360s indoor exhibitions, a shop, café and WCs. Its to simultaneously hold both Canterbury austere rigour says little about Welshness Cathedral and Westminster Abbey but much about 1970s architectural ideas. surveyorships, while Jane Kennedy had care Purcell’s significant new-build additions transform an unusable courtyard into a spacious foyer, while updating and extending the gallery areas for the displays 9 ‘Wales Is…’ and ‘Life Is…’, which bring together the national collections of history and archaeology to create fresh perspectives on Welsh history. The firm also helped write the building’s listing, which influenced its whole strategic approach.

Like St Fagans, Clifton Cathedral in Bristol comes from the stable of Percy Thomas Partnership. As a cathedral it evokes some of Purcell’s most prestigious projects, including those at Durham, Ely and Canterbury – though the Jesuitical mind might claim that Clifton is, in fact, closer in its purpose to the origins of those great buildings as they were adapted to meet the reformed needs of the Church of England.

While currently not in the same league as

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SHARING EXPERTISE

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Tom Brigden and Rowenna Wood report back from Purcell’s international outposts with evidence of how the practice continues to develop conservation policy and guidance overseas, and how this is helping to refine best practice

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success can be seen to lie in its sensibility s a champion of heritage in its and flexibility in navigating the practicalities many diverse forms, Purcell has a and philosophy of conservation for each site, curiosity and enthusiasm for building or object, regardless of location. conserving heritage sites across the There are significant benefits to Purcell’s world. At the heart of this passion is the core breadth of international experience, feeding belief – following UNESCO’s World Heritage through the professional development of all Convention held in 1972 – that it is the collective responsibility of us all to safeguard staff, informing a thoughtful response to every client’s brief and the sharing of our shared heritage. This ideology motivates knowledge and expertise. For Purcell’s Purcell’s teams of architects, surveyors and teams, the practice of conservation across heritage consultants to fully engage in such diverse environments presents international conservation practice.

Purcell’s passion for heritage is matched by unique skills and expertise that have been sought by organisations in the UK and abroad, leading them from the remote foothills of Snowdonia National Park to bustling inner-city Hong Kong and the abandoned whaling stations of the subAntarctic island of South Georgia. The practice’s first foray overseas was in the 1980s with the reordering of the chapel of 2 the English College in Rome. By the 1990s, numerous opportunities to interrogate offices operated in Germany and Ireland, and test established beliefs about the and a major project was delivered to convert management of cultural heritage. For client a former French colonial barracks in teams, the knowledge and experience gained Istanbul into a luxury hotel.

by Purcell in one context may be successfully Purcell’s teams still work in several global transferred to addressing the opportunities locations, including the Commonwealth War and challenges of another. And local Graves Commission’s cemeteries and communities and other project stakeholders memorials in Italy, Israel, Myanmar, India, benefit from Purcell’s experience of Egypt and Belgium. The Commission technical solutions, as well as funding advice honours the 1.7 million men and women of and targeted training in craft skills. Led for the Commonwealth forces who died in the many years by partner Michael Morrison, the First and Second World Wars, in perpetuity. practice acknowledges his belief that ‘the Four decades on from that first overseas effect our international work has upon our project, the root of Purcell’s international

work in the UK, and vice versa, is to stop us taking things for granted – we approach each conservation project with an open mind, we are less ready to just accept the conventional solution’.

The projects covered in this article are indicative of the broad range of Purcell’s work, with each case demonstrating the value the practice provides through a deep understanding of historic building practices, developing solutions to recurring issues, and a back catalogue of tried-and-tested approaches to management, repair and adaptive reuse. Approaching heritage in entirely different contexts and considering the impact that physical, regulatory and cultural characteristics of a site have on conservation philosophies has offered up new insights in heritage and conservation that have been successfully applied in the UK and elsewhere.

A common (sense) approach

On each heritage site – wherever it may be – Purcell adopts an analytical approach with two stages: first, to build a thorough understanding of the place, informed by research and consultation, to identify and understand relative significance values that contribute to the fabric and the spirit of place – a process that, in the case of war cemeteries, battlefields, former prisons or institutions can be particularly emotive; and second, to devise a programme of works that ensures the conservation and interpretation of these values for future generations, whether through repairs, alterations,

1. Laser scan image of Stromness Whaling Station, South Georgia 2. Guano (meat and bone meal) processing plant at Grytviken Whaling Station, South Georgia 3. Kohima War Cemetery in Nagaland, India

‘ With Purcell, we have helped our teams worldwide develop in-house skills to assess the significance of our approximately 25,000 sites in over 150 countries’ Chris McLean, Surveyor, Commonwealth War Graves Commission

are compounded by a short building season and the logistical challenges of acquiring materials, tools and skills – yet, training a dedicated team, providing conservation advice remotely, identifying key maintenance tasks and planning ahead enables a surprising amount to be done each year to conserve the stations.

Full restoration of all South Georgia’s whaling stations presents numerous challenges, not least the limited funding and resources available, along with the removal and disposal of huge amounts of asbestos from unsafe buildings (steam was the motive power and asbestos the preferred form of lagging). While the government has invested in the cleaning up of one whaling station at Grytviken, an approach of managed decline has been adopted generally. In this instance, uninterrupted decay and a return to nature is considered part of the natural lifecycle of the sites; ‘conservation’ is understood more holistically as the maintenance of natural and cultural heritage values. Enabling this has included carrying out a comprehensive laser scan and photographic survey of the structures to ensure a high-quality archival record is maintained for future generations.

Even more extreme are the huts of Scott 3 and Shackleton on Ross Island, Antarctica; these are the most remote sites Purcell – or, almost certainly, anyone – has had the opportunity on which to work. Filled with a panoply of personal artefacts, provisions and scientific equipment associated with the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, their conservation necessitates not only an

international collaborative effort but also a bespoke approach. Antarctica’s climatic extremes and poor access to materials, labour, and even power required for conservation works, meant the usual installation of environmental controls was simply not a realistic option. Purcell’s work helped New Zealand’s Antarctic Heritage Trust to develop a conservation strategy that responded both to retention of significance and practical complexities.

Work is now complete on three of the four Heroic Era huts and continues on the fourth, located at the remote Cape Adare.

Purcell’s work with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, on the other hand, has presented an array of conservation challenges in tropical, mountainous and desert climates. Kohima War Cemetery’s location in the monsoon-swept foothills of north-east India incurs the challenges of the natural environment in the form of earthquakes and landslides that have seen swathes of land and the irrigation system fall away from the cemetery. At the same time, built encroachment and the crowds that descend to enjoy a rare green space in

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enhancements and new additions or simply well-organised maintenance of the site.

This two-stage approach is, in each case, identical, though conservation outcomes necessarily reflect the specific characteristics of each site. Retaining significance, for example, may be considerably more challenging in an international context where the heritage infrastructure differs from that of the UK and where circumstances – climatic, political or financial – may be more extreme.

However, the application of a good deal of common sense – and, where necessary, a pragmatic acceptance that what is right in one context may not be right in another – allows for a successful outcome. In these cases, Purcell’s ability to draw on extensive experience enables the practice to help organisations, communities and other stakeholders navigate the application of internationally accepted conservation principles in response to the specific characteristics of each place.

Some 1,400km south-east of the Falkland Islands on South Georgia, remoteness has preserved some of the most complete examples of 20th-century whaling stations in the world – evidence of an industry many would prefer to forget. Here, philosophical questions about the nature of cultural heritage were paired with geographic complexities: strong katabatic winds rip through the stations, snow weighs down roofs and vessels, ice fills the bay in winter and, throughout the year, rough seas make access to the island slow. The conditions

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‘ Purcell’s exceptional technical and building conservation skills have allowed us to jointly deliver multimillion dollar projects’ Jim Gardner RAIA, Director, GJM Heritage, Melbourne, Australia

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of highly significant 19th- and 20th-century railway infrastructure and the ability to upgrade lines, stations, bridges and tunnels to ensure they continue to serve their communities far into the future. Given the well-established nature of Australia’s heritage processes, collaboration with architects HASSELL and heritage consultants GJM Heritage has enabled the team to benefit from deep local knowledge as well as Purcell’s international expertise.

By way of contrast, at the former Central Police Station compound in Hong Kong, heritage considerations have often been overshadowed by stringent building codes that viewed the 19th-century buildings unfit for continued public use. The complex, occupying an entire city block, had been off-limits to the general public since its establishment. Purcell worked in close collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron and the client, the Hong Kong Jockey Club, to identify opportunities to open up the site and present its heritage values to a wider audience.

Purcell’s long relationship with the client and the site began with the preparation of a EDMON LEONG

the city present issues unlike those seen in Antarctica. The sandblasting of stonework during desert storms in Egypt, the threats from open sewers in Myanmar and the spread of housing in Jerusalem are just a few examples of the many and varied circumstances in which the cemeteries and memorials have to be cared for.

Critical to providing viable advice for these sites has been Purcell’s close liaison with the Commission’s local and regional staff and collaboration alongside local landscape designers and architects to understand typical solutions. Purcell has advised on training programmes for staff at all levels to nurture the development of local skills and respond to variations in language and literacy. Contributing towards skills development within the Commission across its regions worldwide, and to support its work, Purcell has participated in workshops and delivered lectures on significance and conservation management planning.

Purcell also has expertise across diverse regulatory and institutional regimes, both in the UK and abroad. In some cases, strong heritage protection processes – which tend to treat buildings as archaeological relics 5 – render adaptation in line with the needs of contemporary users particularly challenging. For example, in the provision of heritage consultancy services on major infrastructure projects, such as the regeneration of historic rail lines across Victoria and New South Wales, Australia, Purcell’s experience has been to manage the careful balancing act between the retention

conservation management plan for the site and progressed through to detailed documentation for the conservation repair and adaptive reuse of 16 historic buildings, as well as the integration of two new buildings designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

Together, the buildings, which house heritage interpretation displays, art exhibitions, performance venues and education and leisure spaces, as well as restaurants and shops, opened to the public in 2018. This once-closed area now forms a major new cultural hub in the heart of bustling Hong Kong.

Overcoming issues such as the sensitive upgrade of historic stairs along with construction that would meet current building codes required careful, sustained discussion with the relevant government departments; Purcell’s extensive global experience in this field was, therefore, crucial to the achievement of consents for a sensitive and ‘light-touch’ approach. At the same time, Purcell was critical in navigating culturally diverse understandings of heritage and conservation that were inevitable in a complex project involving multinational teams of architects, designers, contractors and craftspeople. UNESCO has been grappling with issues of cultural diversity for some time, resulting in its 1994 publication, The Nara Document on Authenticity. Essentially, UNESCO recognised that the concept of authenticity varies from culture to culture. Likewise, during works to the Central Police Station compound, Purcell’s team worked hard to

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retain historic elements such as cast-iron gutters and downpipes, which local workers were inclined to replace with new as a mark of respect to the site’s heritage. Retaining these features was achieved through a training scheme for architectural staff who were recruited locally and a search for the appropriate materials and craftspeople.

Then, of course, there are those places where heritage legislation and infrastructure are yet to be implemented or, in the case of South Georgia, do not exist. In terms of the project in South Georgia, Purcell played a crucial role in developing policy, guidance and management documents on behalf of, and in collaboration with, the government.

The practice prepared the Heritage Framework and Strategy: South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands, providing overarching guidance on the territory’s heritage places and how they should be cared for. At the framework’s core are the ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) principles, but the guidance is also honest about the underlying lack of resources that means difficult choices have to be made about what can realistically

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be conserved. The philosophy behind 7 Purcell’s conservation management plan for Grytviken whaling station is based on the preservation of significance through the enhancement of the site’s legibility. This benefits the island’s growing number of visitors while allowing a range of options for the site’s future management and ensuring guiding principles for regular maintenance works are both sound and realistic.

The benefits of sharing expertise internationally

The complex, diverse characteristics of each heritage place have shaped how Purcell approaches its work. Not least, its skilled individuals address every site with feet firmly on the ground – after all, a client team only benefits from advice that is achievable in terms of access to materials, skills or finance. Thinking laterally about the most beneficial outcomes achievable with the resources available is a critical component of every project, be it in the UK or elsewhere.

Purcell’s overseas work benefits clients in the UK and abroad. Its professionals can draw on the expertise of the wider practice; examples include Sydney-based partner, 8 Tracey Skovronek, who is taking Purcell into the transport sector with new rail projects in Australia, and London-based associate Andrew Rowland, leading on new residential masterplanning initiatives on projects such as the redevelopment of Dorchester Prison for repeat client City & Country. Equally, Purcell’s experience in South Georgia informed its advice on managing the

4. At Central Police Station compound, Prison Yard has been restored to create a new urban space that provides the setting for Herzog and de Meuron’s new JC Contemporary building 5. Purcell led the conservation repair

and adaptive reuse of 16 historic buildings on the site 6. Residential redevelopment at Dorchester Prison 7. The National Trust’s Orford Ness National Nature Reserve 8. Bendigo Railway Station, Victoria, Australia c.1860

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‘ Extensive experience and knowledge made Purcell indispensable.

Like us, it is openminded, curious, able to think outside the box, but also sensitive to the context and multilayered past of the Central Police Station compound’

dilapidated wartime buildings at Orford Ness, a remote spit on the Suffolk coast.

Access to Orford Ness may not be as tricky as to South Georgia but the site is still very remote – despite being less than 20 miles from Ipswich. There is also much debate about balancing the requirements of a site that has almost every nature conservation designation available and is open to the public, and the need to conserve an array of unique buildings relating to inter-war and post-war military experiments, including now-collapsing scheduled atomic research station buildings. The low-lying coastal locations of Orford Ness and South Georgia mean both are impacted by the weather and coastal erosion, and both have adopted laser-scanning technologies so there are detailed recordings of the sites for future study, even when the sites themselves have been lost.

The benefits Purcell brings to the global context may be summed up as follows: it always brings a sensibility and flexibility towards conservation outcomes, informed by a common-sense approach for each site, building or object, regardless of location.

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1 Entrance garden 2 Green Street Cottages – entrance, shop and orientation space 3 Original castle gates 4 Ty Castell – bed and breakfast 5 Restaurant 1176 6 Curtain wall 7 Second World War pill box 8 Regency Gardens – external performance space 9 Stables – studios, workspace and learning 10 Viewpoint 11 Castle Green House – visitor exhibition and conference space 12 Gardener’s house – holiday accommodation 13 Restored kitchen garden 14 Eisteddfod events garden 15 River Teifi

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Case study Place Time Architecture

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Cardigan Castle I Purcell’s multiple awardwinning project represents over a decade of work, culminating in being named Channel 4 television’s Restoration of the Year

n response to a unique physical, economic and social context, the project is not only an exemplar in relation to the sensitive and sophisticated design approach that was applied, but also in terms of stakeholder engagement, sustainability in its broadest sense, and collectively in the value achieved for the community that this unique collection of buildings serves.

Cardigan Castle now reads as a harmonious collection of purposeful structures and spaces, integrated with their setting, unified by the castle’s original 12th-century curtain walls and

‘ Purcell opened our eyes to the possibilities and gave us the confidence to refuse to take no for an answer’ Joff Timms, Company Secretary and Treasurer, Cadwgan Trust

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restored to exhibit the best of its 12th-, 17th-, 19th- and 21stcentury glory.

The first phase of the works was to repair the main fabric of the castle’s curtain walls and to undertake the structural repairs necessary to allow the removal of the unsightly steel shores, which had blighted the approach to the town for several decades.

The second phase involved the repair, conservation and upgrading of the six buildings within the castle walls, and the restoration of the Regency gardens. These works covered all aspects of traditional building skills, but the biggest conservation challenges involved the specialist internal works, such as the reproduction of unusual Regency wallpapers that survived, the careful repair of fine internal joinery including an 18th-century mahogany staircase, and the extensive repairs of decorative plasterwork. Careful research was undertaken, along with trials and testing of materials and finishes, to inform conservation decisions and ensure the building would be an exemplar for innovative conservation practice, and its spaces and features were fully retained or faithfully reproduced where evidence allowed.

Phase three included building an entire structure in response to the need to provide a new dedicated hospitality building. It was clear this element should be located on one of the only identifiable development sites in the grounds – that within a section of the castle wall that had been partially demolished in the 1960s. This provided a prominent and emblematic new addition to the setting. The position provides views across the Teifi quayside and the river below, and inwards across the Regency gardens; the design cantilevers out above the castle walls, with a strong visual presence that indicates to visitors that there is something special inside. Uncompromisingly contemporary in its detail and articulation, the new café has

1. Stablised but exposed walls form the backdrop to the exhibition that tells story of the castle’s 20th-century decline, using found objects abandoned in the ruins 2. Castle Green House, a regency villa built to conceal original 17th-century ranges commands views over contemporary garden.

The 19th-century whale-bone arch was discovered in the undergrowth 3. The painstaking reproduction, created using surviving fragments of the 19th-century hand-printed ‘blue bird’ pattern wallpaper

Location Cardigan, Wales Client Cardigan Building Preservation Trust Construction value £7.6 million Listing status Grade-I listed, Scheduled Ancient Monument Awards RICS Wales Regeneration Award RICS Wales Community Benefit Award RICS Wales Tourism & Leisure Award RSAW Conservation Award RSAW Award Civic Trust Nation AABC Conservation Award Channel 4 Inaugural Restoration of the Year Award National Eisteddfod of Wales, Architectural Medal (Finalist) Photography Phil Boorman Photography Ltd Words Rob Gregory

large glazed elevations that take advantage of the views, while its transparency balances impact with a new sense of openness.

Solid walls were constructed or coursed with local slate, echoing the slate garden walls that form the backdrop to the site.

Engagement On the site of the first recorded National Eisteddfod, this project completes the latest chapter in an 840-year-long story that repositions Cardigan Castle at the heart of Welsh national life.

Echoing the spirit of the National Trust’s Conservation in Action initiative, Cardigan’s on-site open days saw skilled craftspeople become impassioned tour guides, hosting up to 300 visitors per day. Through this, loyalty was built with a new, cross-generational community of visitors who better understood the compelling visitor experience on offer at the previously derelict and inaccessible site.

Further, the discovery of medieval cellars and other structures beneath the later buildings allowed for a programme of works to be undertaken as a ‘community archaeology’ project. This helped with engagement and had financial benefits for the client.

Sustainability Cardigan Castle’s restoration excellently demonstrates how conserving important historic buildings benefits the people they serve. Final proposals included integrating insulating line renders, energy-efficient boilers, LED lighting and photovoltaics on hidden roof planes. As financial and social sustainability was a high priority, all materials and labour were sourced from within a 50-mile radius.

A strategy of flexible use was also adopted across the entire site so exhibition spaces double as meeting rooms, holiday lets are configured to serve conference guests and hospitality facilities are suitable for day-to-day and ceremonial events.

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1. At Yr Ysgwrn, Purcell integrated much-needed visitor facilities, such as a shop, café, education space and orientation exhibition, by subtly extending this cluster of partially buried agricultural buildings 2. Charles Dickens 3. Hedd Wyn 4. William Wordsworth 5. Jane Austen 12

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By their buildings shall ye know them Purcell has a deep connection with people and places, from those who have shaped our collective consciousness to the most heroic innovators, writes Paul Finch

project – planned to complete in 2020, marking the 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth – consists of seven separate elements in the tiny hamlet of Town End, some conservation repair (Dove Cottage), some retrofit (a new café and education centre) and some new-build (with a contemporary museum extension and rooftop vantage point). The strategy was partly based on a wish to avoid a formal new visitor centre becoming too dominant, achieved through its location near, but not overshadowing, Dove Cottage itself.

Thirdly, and most poignantly, is a giant of Welsh poetry, Hedd Wyn (1887-1917), whose life tragically ended at the Battle of Passchendaele in the First World War, after Wyn (his bardic name) had enlisted to save his younger brother having to go to war. On 4 leave before the battle, he entered a poem for that year’s National Eisteddfod; it was declared the winner, but he had died six weeks earlier. The bard’s chair was draped in black and presented to his family.

Following Snowdonia National Park Authority’s purchase of Yr Ysgwrn, the North Wales family farm where Wyn spent most of his life, it has been transformed into a 5 museum celebrating his life and work. This is a project where major improvements – including a new visitor centre, education room, shop, offices, and even a new cow shed – have been added as subtle interventions in the landscape. In harmony with Hedd Wyn’s beautifully restored home, these modern elements create a significant cultural destination, even though it is, like the other

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this is to be found in the Georgian terraced house in Holborn, London, that was his home (purchased by the Dickens Charitable Trust almost century ago), plus the adjacent house.

In this instance, Purcell’s work has largely been conservation and preservation – management plan, detailed refurbishment and repair – but also included the necessary adaptations for access and circulation, plus a significant but reversible timber-clad, steel-frame extension. The key was to retain a sense of the original rooms, while improving arrangements for displays and exhibitions.

The second example concerns that giant of English poetry, William Wordsworth, and a series of proposals, all modestly scaled, in Grasmere, Cumbria. The £6 million ‘Reimagining Wordsworth’ development

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dentity, whether personal, civic or national, is inextricably connected to architecture. The title of this essay, an adaptation from the Sermon on the Mount, might be taken as a reference not just to the rich seam of buildings that Purcell has worked on in recent decades, but as a description of its own identity. That identity is itself bound up with its relationship to the work of others, and in particular to those architects from bygone eras who created the buildings and environments that have helped to shape our history and, sometimes, our sense of self.

Inevitably, having had an ongoing relationship with some of our most famous national landmarks and icons, some of the most prominent Purcell projects relate to centuries-old institutions exercising power and wealth: monarchy, church and 2 aristocracy, represented by palaces, cathedrals and castles, that heritage trinity so beloved of the British public (the National Trust is the biggest membership organisation in the country). However, within Purcell’s extraordinarily wide oeuvre, you will find still, small voices of calm amid more familiar blockbusters.

Take, for example, four modest pieces of 3 architecture that are in inverse proportion to the historic significance of their former occupants – significant because of what they represent culturally and historically. The first example concerns Charles Dickens, who had an extraordinary life and impact on the consciousness (and self-consciousness) of Victorian England. The museum celebrating

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with a healthy line in hosting non-medical events and lectures of all descriptions. The building was designed with this in mind, in that its circulation, lecture theatre and other spaces are not created for physicians only.

What are the implications of changes to the original, now Grade I-listed, structure?

Purcell partner, Heather Jermy, responsible for a huge piece of research on the RCP, undertaken to prepare a conservation management plan, is clear that the purpose of conservation is not to ‘preserve a building in aspic’, but to come to an understanding of the design, the architect’s intention and the scope for adaptation or extension in tune with the spirit of the original architecture. In the case of the RCP, for instance, her research showed

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two examples, modestly scaled – a rare ability in contemporary architecture, soon to be deployed on the former home of provocative 18th-century novelist, Jane Austen.

At a larger scale, but still marking the contribution to history of a significant individual, is Purcell’s work on Cromford Mills in Derbyshire, made famous in 1771

by Richard Arkwright (later knighted), founding father of the industrial revolution.

This was the first working water-powered, cotton-spinning mill, marrying early factory techniques with those of traditional weaving.

Purcell has been engaged in a series of interventions in the Grade I-listed complex, most significantly the creation of a visitor centre plus small business units and media facilities in Building 17, following an encapsulation programme to deal with high contamination levels resulting from the 7 building’s use as a lead-paint works. The centre acts as a starting point for visitors to the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site. Another project on the site, completed in five months, required the upgrade of an existing café in the Wheatcroft’s Wharf building, where the tricky issues of adapting a listed building were negotiated to provide, among other things, a steel and timber stair 8 and a dumb waiter. The Cromford work won a deserved Europa Nostra award.

The challenges faced in respect of conservation plans is by no means confined to the distant past. For example, Purcell has been involved in advising on Denys Lasdun’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) in London’s Regent’s Park, a working building

that Lasdun anticipated an additional storey on the building as an extension to the Albany wing. It also became apparent that the use of different materials provides clues as to where the original architect assumed permanence (tiles) and where he could see change (engineering brick). Jermy says the attention to detail she paid over many months to this very particular building created a sort of relationship with the architect: ‘It is as though Lasdun was the ghost in the corner.’

The understanding of his work, through detailed study of the RCP, means that in dealing with other elements of Lasdun’s oeuvre, it becomes easier to identify capacity for change, albeit in the spirit of the original.

Such is the case with Teaching Wall at the University of East Anglia, where Purcell is assessing its original design concept, materiality and place in the wider (unrealised) Lasdun masterplan to determine its significance. One might contrast this with HRH Prince of Wales’ criticism of Lasdun’s Royal National Theatre as resembling ‘a nuclear power station’ or his ‘carbuncle’ speech, condemning what he saw as offensive modernism at the dinner to mark the RIBA’s 150th anniversary, held in the surroundings of Hampton Court, where Purcell has given advice in respect of the use of interiors for temporary installations.

Lasdun’s Royal National Theatre, of course, has very little capacity for change – few things are deader than a dead power station.

Purcell, fortunately, need not regard architecture in binary princely terms; its interests lie in identifying such a capacity, following detailed investigation from which new design work may arise. Its architects, surveyors and heritage consultants assess the past in a systematic and scholarly way, but always in the context of looking to the future, be that in ‘simple’ refurbishments or in relation to major long-term projects such as the Palace of Westminster, Elizabeth Tower or Tower Bridge.

What is clear then, while well known for collaborating with contemporary designers such as Niall McLaughlin, SANAA, Jamie Fobert and Sam Jacob, Purcell continues to apply generations of experience to the design of its own new buildings. On projects such as the Hyde at Dillington House, the National Maritime Museum, Cardigan Castle, Aerospace Bristol, and with highprofile competition-winning designs for the Royal Artillery Museum and St Mary Redcliffe Church in progress, the juxtaposition of new and old creates its own dynamic, further eliding the silos of the two.

This benefits both people and places, with their entirely appropriate intention: to reinforce and complement existing identity through bespoke historic analysis and considered architectural response – an approach that not only respects the past but also embraces potential for the future.

PAUL MCMULLIN

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‘ Purcell immediately understood the significance of the site and took the most sympathetic and beautiful approach to the whole project’

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Snowdonia National Park Authority

6. Adjacent to William and Dorothy Wordsworth’s one-time home, Dove Cottage, Purcell will soon complete this new museum and rooftop vantage point 7. Purcell’s 2016 competition-winning scheme for the Royal Artillery Museum on Salisbury Plain 8. Purcell’s 2016 competition winning scheme for St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol 9. Purcell’s new orientation gallery at Yr Ysgwrn replaces an existing partially buried agricultural shed 15

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‘ Purcell used its vast knowledge of heritage environments to develop convincing justifications for the contemporary interventions and build effective relationships with the local authorities’

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Case study Place Time Architecture

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Auckland Castle Time formed a hook for this scholarly, informed approach to conserving and enhancing the site to create a visitor destination that would drive local and regional socio-economic regeneration

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uckland Castle rests on a plateau that gently stretches from the north-east corner of Bishop Auckland. The site forms an eclectic threshold of structures and spaces between the town’s Market Place and the wilderness of the historic deer park beyond.

Auckland Castle began as the fortified medieval manor and hunting ground of the Prince Bishops of Durham. The standing buildings of the core palace or ‘castle’ date from the 12th century, and are accompanied by a rich archaeological story above and below ground. The impact of individual bishops working collaboratively with their craftspeople and architects can be clearly read throughout the site, leaving a palimpsest of time of unique integrity – from entire structures down to individual paint layers in the state rooms.

These ideas of time, its products and the concept of close collaboration shaped the platform for re-imagining Auckland Castle after its acquisition by Auckland Castle Trust in 2012. Following a successful Round 1 application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), a design competition was launched in 2013 to establish the team and ideas that would take the vision of Jonathan Ruffer and The Auckland Project into its development and delivery phases.

The brief required conservation and re-presentation of the castle and its state rooms, accessibility and facility improvements, a full M&E upgrade and a new, bespoke, environmentally controlled building for permanent and temporary exhibitions.

The scale, sensitivity and complexity of the castle and its setting, combined with the brief’s ambitious demands, required a bespoke spectrum of skills in heritage and architecture capable of taking such a scheme through planning through to completion.

From planning towards completion A design team, fronted by Purcell as lead consultant and conservation architects with Niall

extension within its heritage context, by Niall McLaughlin Architects 5. Initial composite phasing plan including lost buildings and features (red hatches) and potential development opportunities to recover significant heritage ‘grain’ (blue hatches)

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1. Artist’s impression of Auckland Castle from the Deer Park, c.1700. Oil on canvas 2. New restaurant concept for the Walled Garden at Auckland Castle

by SANAA 3. Auckland Tower by Niall McLaughlin Architects, nearing completion on site, 2018 4. Concept for the new Scotland Wing gallery 5

McLaughlin Architects, was selected and an initial masterplan shaped. The team used site visits and preliminary heritage surveys to create not only an exciting, alternative proposal to what had been envisaged at HLF Round 1, but also one that was entirely credible on what would otherwise have been considered a claustrophobic, constrained site.

Knowledge of the castle’s depth of time and development above and below ground was brought together in a combined plan.

Forward-looking layers indicated where development opportunities were feasible, addressed the brief

and revived the grain and context of the historic layout.

Using time in this way – along with Purcell’s close collaboration with Niall McLaughlin and the client team – created the perfect climate in which to engage statutory stakeholders including Durham County Council and Historic England, representatives of which essentially became part of the design team.

This paved the way for successful planning applications and listed building consents, as well as the high-profile satellite projects that grew out of the initial masterplanning phases,

Location Bishop Auckland Client The Auckland Project Construction value Undisclosed Listing status Grade-I listed, with Grade-II*/II assets within the castle setting Grade-II* Registered Park and Garden Words Alexander Holton

briefings and heritage studies.

These include Auckland Tower (by Niall McLaughlin Architects, with Purcell providing heritage consultancy and coordination services up to planning) and the walled garden restaurant (by SANAA, landscape architect Pip Morrison and Purcell). It is difficult to envisage any of these schemes happening in such a high-quality heritage environment without the fortuitous culture that was established between consultants, client and stakeholders in 2013 and Purcell’s proactive preoccupation with history, legacy and time.

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1. The 14th-century Great Kitchen is one of only two surviving medieval monastic kitchens of this type in England. With its distinctive octagonal ceiling and high ribvaulted ceiling, it is now the home of the Anglo-Saxon ‘Treasures of St Cuthbert’ display 2. St George’s Hall in Liverpool, where Purcell helped re-open spaces that had been out of use for over 20 years

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Typologies crumble but buildings live on Ken Powell explores Purcell’s ongoing contribution to architectural typologies, from bunkers and hangars to cowsheds and cathedrals, focusing on a recent rise in work on town halls

in Buckinghamshire – in use by Stowe School for nearly a century – is now open to the public, with the school the tenant of a charitable trust that has owned the house since 1997. Stowe House is, again, the focus of the great landscape park owned by the National Trust. In Bristol, the former general hospital, Grade-II listed, has been converted to apartments. The reinstatement of the octagonal dome that crowned the 1850s building until it was destroyed by Second World War bombs is a notable feature of the scheme. Alongside conversion and reuse, however, there is a reassessment of what the purpose of existing buildings is and how they need to adapt for a future that challenges established conceptions of building typologies.

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ANDY MARSHALL

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f one looks back at any book on the history of Western architecture from the beginnings to the middle of the 18th century one will find that it is almost entirely made up of churches and castles and palaces.’ So wrote Nikolaus Pevsner in 1976. A multiplicity of new building types – railway stations, hotels, office blocks, market halls, banks and mills among them – emerged during the course of the 19th century. The categorisation of building types overlapped with the contemporary debate on style: a railway station should be ‘modern’ in style, the great theorist Gottfried Semper argued, a church Gothic.

Over the seven decades since Donovan Purcell established the practice, Purcell has worked on an extraordinary range of building types, including some – for 2 example, an aircraft hangar or a Cold War bunker – that were unknown to the Victorians. The definition of an historic building is constantly changing – and repairing, renewing and repurposing existing buildings, in Britain and far beyond, alongside outstanding new design, remains at the core of Purcell’s workload.

The definition of a building type, as understood in the 19th century, is today fluid, not least because economic and social change have made the conversion of many existing buildings to entirely new uses the key to their survival. A police headquarters and jail in Hong Kong becomes an arts and heritage centre, for example, a printworks in Glasgow a stylish hotel, while Stowe House

Purcell began as a practice with the care of churches and cathedrals. It has looked after Ely Cathedral, one of the greatest medieval monuments in Europe, for over 50 years. A 10-year repair project was completed in 2000, ensuring the building’s survival. The central function of a cathedral has not changed since Ely was constructed: every day the Eucharist is celebrated, and morning and evening prayer said or sung.

The Victorians repurposed long-neglected cathedrals as tourist sites and places for public worship, but cathedrals today have become not only visitor attractions but also buildings serving a wide community.

Concerts, exhibitions and graduation ceremonies bring people to Ely from across East Anglia and beyond. Yet, until Purcell completed the new link to Lady Chapel, there were no lavatories for visitors – the Victorians would probably have thought their provision improper. A vision for re-equipping the cathedral for its wider role as a centre for cultural and community events informs the masterplan for its future development produced by Purcell.

The practice also has the care of other great medieval cathedrals. At Canterbury it has been responsible for an extensive scheme of repairs extending over two decades and other work, including a new floor for the nave incorporating underfloor heating. Durham Cathedral, the subject of an ongoing repair programme, has added a new dimension to its visitor experience with the Open Treasure project, financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and completed 19

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‘ If I had to describe the approach taken by Purcell, it would be developing outstanding innovative and creative responses to 21st-century heritage conservation issues’ Phillip Davies, Chapter Clerk, Durham Cathedral

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a more modest assembly hall. Liverpool’s St George’s Hall, completed in the 1850s and one of the finest neoclassical buildings in Europe, had at its centre a vast hall of Roman splendour but uncertain purpose, along with a concert room and law courts.

(The city already possessed a fine Georgian town hall.) The removal of the courts to a new building in 1984 led to a period in which the hall was effectively mothballed, closed to the public, lacking a purpose and in need of major repairs. Purcell’s £23 million restoration and regeneration project, completed in 2007, saw St George’s Hall reborn as a multifunctional venue, hosting concerts, conferences, receptions, weddings and many other events, with its running in the hands of a voluntary trust. In addition, a

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in 2018. Precious Anglo-Saxon and medieval artefacts are spectacularly displayed in the former monks’ dormitory and the vaulted Great Kitchen, while a vaulted undercroft houses a new cathedral shop.

Ely, Canterbury and Durham have long been recognised as historic monuments of global significance. The 20th-century Roman Catholic cathedrals at Liverpool and Clifton in Bristol have only recently been acknowledged as key works of their period.

At Clifton, a strikingly sculptural 1970s building, Purcell’s task was largely one of services renewal and re-roofing – after more than four decades the building is finally watertight. Similar issues have been addressed at Liverpool’s 1960s Metropolitan Cathedral where, again, the first stage in developing a strategy of conservation and repair was to produce an evaluation of 5 significance to inform work on the fabric.

A particular challenge was repairing the spectacular central lantern, in which stained glass by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens is set within slender precast concrete ribs and bonded with epoxy resin, a typically innovative constructional strategy of the day.

If cathedrals are finding a new role in the 21st century, so too are those ‘secular cathedrals’ of the 19th century – the great town and public halls constructed in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and other industrial and commercial centres.

Even when they were new, their roles and functions varied. Manchester’s, echoing the great cloth halls of the Middle Ages, was primarily a centre for local government, with

new visitor centre was created at basement level. St George’s Hall is now a focal point of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Manchester Town Hall, a Gothic Revival masterpiece by Alfred Waterhouse, opened in 1877 and remains the symbol of the city; it is the backcloth to Albert Square, where Mancunians gather to celebrate or, as in the wake of the 2017 terrorist attack, to mourn.

Designed as the administrative and ceremonial centre of the then Manchester Corporation, it features formal reception rooms, an assembly hall (famous for its Ford Madox Brown murals), offices, a police station, registry office and coroner’s court.

The construction of a large but physically separate extension, designed by E Vincent Harris and completed in 1938, decanted many of the administrative functions of the town hall, including the Council Chamber, and provided, to some degree, a starting point for the reimagining of the building that informs Purcell’s response to the Our Town Hall project brief. ‘Our’ is in recognition by the City Council that the town hall belongs to the whole population of Manchester, and it is a fundamental principle that the project will deliver a lasting social and economic legacy for the city. Led by partners Jamie Coath and Nicola Hewes, the project began with an exhaustive study of the building, of its planning, construction, materials, services and contents (ranging from an exceptional collection of Victorian sculpture to tea cups and plates made to Waterhouse’s designs).

A methodology for assessing the significance

3. Waterhouse’s iconic and ingenious triangular plan for Manchester Town Hall 4. The 10-year scheme will restore the Grade-I listed landmark and create a civic building for its 21st-century community 5. A symbol of Manchester, the worker bee is used symbolically here in a mosaic pattern for the

town hall’s landing foyer 6. The glazed extension enhances the operation and legibility of Maesteg Town Hall while retaining views of the existing fabric 7. As an extension to the street, the new front-of-house facilities provide for a lively arts venue and vibrant community space

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London) is planned. In the 19th century, Manchester’s local authority provided the city’s water and gas supplies, ran its schools, health clinics, trams and many other services. The role of local authorities has contracted so maintaining large civic buildings may now seem a costly luxury.

Maesteg Town Hall in south Wales is modest alongside that of Manchester but remains the principal monument in this small industrial town. Completed in 1881 but radically remodelled and extended in 1913-14, the Grade-II listed building represents another strand in the typology of the town hall. Primarily a public hall and intended to host musical events and public meetings, it originally accommodated 1200 people (it now seats 500). Much of the funding was provided by local miners and a market hall occupied the lower ground floor.

Municipal offices originally located there were subsequently moved into a purposebuilt office building.

By the 1960s, the town hall appeared doomed and demolition was seriously mooted. In due course, with demolition averted, Bridgend County Borough Council entrusted the management of the building to Awen Cultural Trust, which has brought 7 it back to life as a lively arts and community resource. The building is, however, in need of major investment; overdue repairs to its fabric are an urgent priority and, beyond this, tired and inappropriately altered internal spaces need to be transformed.

In June 2018, the HLF committed funding to progress Purcell’s proposals for its

regeneration. The core function of the town hall as a performance space will be reinforced, while the former market hall space on the lower ground floor, a library and local history research centre will introduce new activity into the building.

To accommodate this, an extension to the existing fabric is vital – Purcell has conceived this as a highly transparent, dematerialised element through which the existing side elevation of the building can be clearly read. An equally ambitious and diverse range of uses is proposed in the practice’s most recent commission at Camden Town Hall, which adds commercial office accommodation and events spaces to this rich mix.

Converting historic buildings to new uses is now commonplace internationally: what is still recognisable as a church may be a house, a pub, a sports centre, an office or a concert hall. The thoughtful process of extending the use of an historic building, as at Ely, Stowe, Liverpool or Maesteg, is equally creative and even more challenging.

Established typologies crumble but the buildings live on.

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of the building was developed, extending beyond its architecture and role as a symbol of civic pride to a study of its construction techniques and the ideas that informed Waterhouse’s work, with its fine balance of technology and craftsmanship.

Issues of collective memory and the place of the town hall in the social history of Manchester feature strongly in the study.

Public engagement, alongside consultation with statutory bodies and stakeholders, is a fundamental aspect of the project. The needs of existing users have been studied along with the potential for new uses, including those that are commercial and will form part of a long-term funding package.

The aim of Manchester City Council is to maintain the existing functions of the town hall while making it more of a visitor building – open to visitors and to the people of the city, fully accessible and with a new heritage centre as a key feature.

Greatly increased provision for public events and meetings is part of the package, which will generate income, offset running costs and alleviate pressure on the public purse. The town hall will remain the heart of local government, housing the council’s leadership team and senior management.

As an example of municipal enterprise on an ambitious scale, the project, due for completion in 2024, is in the spirit of the Victorians who constructed it. Alongside its restoration and renewal, a major reworking of Albert Square, with its Grade-II listed Prince Albert Monument (completed before its counterpart in

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he National Maritime Museum is the UK’s leading maritime museum and the largest of its kind in the world. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the large complex of historic buildings welcomes more than 1.5 million visitors every year.

The museum is home to over 500,000 maritime artefacts including maps, artworks and significant objects. Purcell was appointed heritage consultant and conservation architect to

Case study Place Time Architecture

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lanterns and a triple-height atrium, entices visitors into the special exhibitions gallery, while large windows reflect the park to highlight the iconic landscape.

Despite its contemporary aesthetic, the scheme is inspired by the rhythmic window sequences found in Baroque buildings and much of the space is below ground to ensure the Victorian facade remains visible.

A total of 580m2 of outdoor space has been returned to public use.

renovate and develop various areas of the museum.

The multimillion pound project completed in 2011 transformed the Grade-I listed Sammy Ofer Wing building, doubling the size of the south-west wing to 7,300m2.

The concept design by architects CF Møller was developed and delivered by Purcell.

The scheme created a new contemporary entrance, blending into the landscape of Greenwich Park. The lobby, with roof

National Maritime Museum This conservation, refurbishment and restoration programme for Greenwich’s world-class exhibition space engages members of the public in the history of ocean exploration

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alongside £5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).

The wing was the largest development in the museum’s history and became a catalyst of change for how it presents its galleries, exhibitions and events.

The Endeavour Galleries Purcell worked with the museum’s team to renovate and restructure outdated spaces in the Grade-I listed building, transforming them into four exhibition and archive collection spaces – The Endeavour Galleries. Work included the redecoration of the rotunda designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

The spaces were previously accommodated by offices and the closed Caird Library. The library, 4 with features and furniture designed by Lutyens, became redundant with the new museum library, archive and reading room in the Sammy Ofer Wing but, through careful negotiation with Historic England and the Twentieth Century Society, some of Lutyens book stacks and panelling could be used in other areas in the museum, allowing the library space to be converted to a public gallery.

The new gallery spaces – named Polar Worlds, Tudor and Stuart Seafarers, Pacific Encounters and Sea Things – have been carefully designed by Purcell, working closely with exhibition designers and museum curators. They integrate technical requirements 5 for floor loadings, narrative interpretative displays, and conservation and environmental control for the artefacts. The project also allowed Purcell to introduce a contemporary bridge to link the galleries with the main museum and resolve the space’s visitor circulation issues.

Funded by the HLF, the development will facilitate more learning opportunities than ever before, with a new classroom hub area, better office facilities and restoration throughout. As some 1,000m2 of space has been converted for public use, 40% more artefacts can be displayed.

‘ Despite the scheme being potentially controversial, Purcell guided us through negotiating the statutory consents’

1. Improved circulation enhanced access between the Greenwich Park landscape, visitor facilities and exhibition spaces 2. The Sammy Ofer Wing extension created a new contemporary entrance 3. Detail of the glass roof lanterns that sensitively highlight the rhythmic windows of the Baroque building 4. The triple-height atrium entices visitors into the special exhibitions gallery 5. New galleries refresh outdated spaces to create more exhibition space to display over 1,000 ocean exploration artefacts

Margarette Lincoln, Deputy Director, National Maritime Museum

Location Greenwich, London Client Royal Museums Greenwich Construction value £30 million Listing status Grade-I listed, UNESCO World Heritage Site Awards Civic Trust Award (Commended), London Planning Award (Commended), New London Awards Culture & Community (Commended), RIBA London Award, Landscape Institute Public Project Award Photography Morley von Sternberg, unless otherwise stated Words Jess McCulloch

NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM

Purcell’s sensitive renovation included a new café, restaurant, improved circulation spaces, enhanced visitor facilities and state-of-the-art exhibition spaces, including the 850m2 special exhibitions gallery. A new library was also created to meet the demands of historical document storage. With a world-class collection of over 100,000 books and miles of shelved manuscripts, the new space gives researchers and the public unprecedented access to key artefacts for the first time. Rated Very Good by BREEAM, the renovation and extension were made possible by a donation of £20 million from Sammy Ofer, philanthropist and international shipping magnate,

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1. Visitors enjoy the new installation of Tower Bridge’s glass walkway in London 2. Purcell’s work for the Palace of Westminster includes the sensitive renovation of Elizabeth Tower 24

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Stonemasons, chisels, BIM and beyond Hugh Pearman looks at Purcell’s technical expertise and how tradition and innovation impacts on significance, repair and replacement decisions

palace’s rolling repairs, is working closely with Strategic Estates, as architects, on a four-year programme to restore Elizabeth Tower, which is one of the most visible parts of the Parliamentary Estate.

This is a prestigious and emblematic job, not only in itself or from a craft point of view, but also as a symbol of London and of parliamentary democracy in a World Heritage Site. Elizabeth Tower will be complete before parallel building work starts on the palace’s extensive restoration and renewal project so a job that prosaically, if elaborately, involves restoring the tower’s stonework, roof, clock and clock faces – while also adding a lift and modern services – takes on a far greater importance than the very challenging elements of the

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few years ago, I was fortunate to be taken on a tour of the Palace of Westminster by Parliament’s principal architect, Adam Watrobski. Nothing unusual about that of course; MPs and Lords arrange such visits all the time. But this was different. I had been invited to see the parts of the Houses of Parliament few get to see: down in the cellars; up on the roofs; in and out of usually locked doors, back stairs, sidling through cramped offices and climbing through windows onto catwalks.

The aim was to demonstrate that Barry and Pugin’s magnificent seat of government and home of UK democracy was falling apart. And so it was – from its leaking cast-iron roofs via its spalling, friable stonework and its patched-up heating, ventilation and cooling systems to its pongy 2 drains. And that is before you take into account the wear and tear on the interior finishes, the result of the human and mechanical friction of more than one and a half centuries of constant use.

Visits such as mine were part of a briefing exercise to get us all used to the enormous scope and cost of the works required – that this was an ‘in-the-bones’ job, way more than a cosmetic exercise. Today, we see that the most essential parts of this repair work are under way, with cast-iron roofs and other areas of the palace shrouded in scaffolding that becomes especially elaborate over Elizabeth Tower – better known as Big Ben after its famous bell that chimes the hours.

This is where Purcell, long involved in the

brief suggest. This is nothing less than stewardship of a global landmark. Craft and technology interweave: on one hand there are stonemasons with chisels, on the other, a parallel virtual existence – the palace is the first parliamentary project with a full BIM model.

It is not unnatural that buildings in World Heritage Sites recur in this side of Purcell’s work. Also in London, the prime example would be Tower Bridge of 1894, no less a Gothic historicist confection than the earlier Palace of Westminster though the Barry involved in this case was Charles’ youngest son John Wolfe Barry, who was an engineer. The architect, the City of London’s Horace Jones (not in the same league as Pugin) died just after construction began and, all in all, it is a strange hybrid structure but still – we wouldn’t wish it wasn’t there, would we?

Purcell’s work here was intervention rather than restoration. JW Barry’s twin high-level walkways, 42m above the Thames, are pure engineering – almost unadorned horizontal steel trusses, which act in tension to support the horizontal drag on the towers of the suspension bridge sections at either end. Beneath, the bridge’s central bascules rise and fall.

The walkways provided an alternative route across the river for pedestrians at a time when the bridge had to be raised often for tall and large ships, and later became part of the structure’s visitor exhibition. Now you can see down through them to the traffic passing far below or the bascules, 25

‘ Together we have created a museum that has been very well received. Such is our regard for Purcell, we are already planning the next phase of development’

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JACK HOBHOUSE

Lloyd Burnell, Director, Aerospace Bristol

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peninsula in the River Wear rather than lengthwise along it, as would have been structurally much simpler. Along with its companion castle, it almost overhangs the gorge on the west, supported by a stone plinth. This, in turn, becomes part of a historic and much-patched perimeter wall running right round the peninsula, which includes not only the castle and cathedral precincts but also several university colleges aside from the original one located in the castle itself. I spent three years living within those walls. If you walk around the outside of them as they crown the peninsula, you’ll know that this linear architecture is an indispensable part of the overall experience of the place. Grade-I listed, they have been

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themselves, as they are raised. The design job here was to insert two structural glass floors, one in each of the walkways. It is a very simple, if mildly terrifying, adaptation of a Grade-I listed building that kept the tourist cash tills ringing.

There are landmarks and landmarks.

Clevedon Pier? A lovely, delicate little cast-iron structure reaching out into the Severn Estuary. Perhaps a bit too delicate given that in 1970, while being weight tested for insurance purposes, two of its spans collapsed into the sea. Demolition loomed but a strong campaign locally and nationally saved it. Purcell’s part in this was to develop techniques whereby the pier was disassembled, taken away for conservation and repair, then reassembled on site and eventually fully reopened. Steamers once 4 again call there.

Not everything in the world of conservation and restoration presents such visible results however. A large part of the work of conservation architects – who, in turn, represent a large segment of the profession overall – consists of surveying. If you don’t look hard and record everything, you’re not going to be able to maintain historic structures very well. The technology available here has evolved rapidly in recent times, from drone photography to digital surface mapping and 3D modelling.

Take Durham Cathedral. This aweinducing building is ecclesiastically correct in being aligned east–west – yet this means it is perversely set athwart its steep

much neglected. Purcell’s condition survey ranged from the micro – how loose is the mortar? Is that ivy causing damage? – to the macro: long views of what is (again) a World Heritage Site. The juxtaposition of new technology with old, traditional craft techniques takes various forms. There is no recent cut-off date: as explained in the next essay, it’s also all about the overarching concept of significance.

As a visitor to the Aerospace Bristol museum at Filton, it’s obviously the flying machines you’ve come for, and there’s a whole separate specialist restoration/ conservation industry involved with those.

What most people won’t immediately pick up is the way the buildings themselves – hangars, ancient and modern – are adapted and revealed not simply as a backdrop to the exhibits, but in knowing contrast to them. The timber lattice Belfast truss, for instance, is to be found in hangars of First World War vintage, two of which survive, listed, on Filton Airfield. Filton later played a pivotal role in the development of Concorde, one of which is here in a purposebuilt, climate-controlled new hangar designed for maximum dramatic display.

This was a project ranging from a conservation management plan to newbuild, and included liaison with a separate exhibition designer, Event Communications.

Dealing directly with a building of significance is one thing, but a lot of the effort in this intertwined story of conservation, adaptation and new-build

ANDY SPAIN

GREG HARDING

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renovation of the medieval stained-glass Great South Window 5. Climbing the lantern tower of Frederick Gibberd’s Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral 6. Old pottery kilns at the

the Metropolitan. Battersea, itself, could be considered something of an industrial Rievaulx Abbey or Fountains Abbey – neglected and open to the elements, but now on its way back to useful life. Imagine getting to grips with that behemoth, from the surveys and the identification of suitable repair materials to the total and historically correct replacement of its previously decayed concrete fluted chimneys, which I regard as an unsung triumph. Purcell has a tripartite role here within the team of other architects and engineers, serving as conservation architects, heritage advisers and heritage assessors, vetting proposals for the re-use of the building.

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concerns proximity to what we might call the ‘significant other’. So at CoRE (the Centre of Refurbishment Excellence) in Stoke-on-Trent, led by Purcell partner Jamie Coath and associate Andrew Dobson, one element of the work consisted of conserving and adapting the significant building – old pottery kilns, factory and pub – while another dealt with proximity: a new building, separate from but linked to the old, was to act as an entrance hub. The net result of all this is a hybrid complex of considerable technical sophistication.

Again, time slips here. At St Catherine’s College, Oxford, the commission for a new set of student-room pavilions and a graduate common-room building deals with two significant others: first the listed architecture of Arne Jacobsen’s original 7 college from the early 1960s, second the additions made to the college over a quarter of a century from 1993 by architects Hodder + Partners. Stephen Hodder’s meticulous additions, drawing on the language, materials and landscape of Jacobsen, have themselves now become a considerable presence, a composition to which Purcell now responds in its phase of buildings that are ‘completing’ the college. Thus, architects pass the baton down the years.

Let’s finish with some other cathedrals – Canterbury, Liverpool Metropolitan and Clifton – and add to the mix the shell of Battersea Power Station by cathedral architect Giles Gilbert Scott, who designed Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral – a sister to

3. Adaptive reuse of Aerospace Bristol’s industrial aircraft hangars to innovatively showcase aviation artefacts 4. Canterbury Cathedral’s RICS award-winning

Centre of Refurbishment Excellence 7. The stained-glass lantern tower designed by mid-century British artists John Piper and John Reyntiens

As for the real cathedrals, the Great South Window at Canterbury, a medieval masterpiece of prodigious scale, was starting to give way. The causes of its troubles had to be dealt with before it was repaired piece by piece, and all by hand.

Historic deformities had to be preserved, otherwise the glass would not have fitted back into place. Achieving this recovery required designing the setting-out tools.

Six centuries after the construction of Canterbury Cathedral, things were equally spectacular in Liverpool. The Piper/ Reyntiens cathedral lantern tower at Frederick Gibberd’s space-capsule creation may have been by the same artist/maker stained-glass team as found at Basil Spence’s earlier Coventry Cathedral but, in Liverpool, experimental construction techniques have plagued the building almost since it opened in 1967. The enormous tapering cylinder of the lantern tower was leaking. What was needed was a repair methodology but – unlike in Canterbury – there was no conservation precedent. This is a grant-aided work in progress. What is significant and to be preserved at all costs? What is replaceable, and – given that the recent past is often more obscure than the distant – how, actually, was it made? Bringing this project to a successful conclusion requires the gaining of a new knowledge for a new kind of conservation and repair – as discussed by Jon Wright and David Hills in the next essay.

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1. The Palaeontology Wing at the Natural History Museum, assessed by Purcell for inclusion in the national list 2. Axonometric of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, showing the structural frame and geometric composition of Gibberd’s building 3. The Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, Venturi’s only building in the UK 4. St Fagans National Museum of History – Purcell’s approach guided Cadw and added new buildings to the post-war context

IT’S ALL ARCHITECTURE TO US… Jon Wright and David Hills discuss how dilemmas raised by 20th-century buildings are influencing established philosophies on the conservation of buildings from earlier periods

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nature of fabric is paramount if we are to avoid mistakes of the past and define new modes of conservation for the future.

Balancing tangible and intangible significance

As with buildings of any period, the tangible fabric of modern architecture – concrete, steel, plastic and glass (among other things) – comes with range of intangible values.

Objectively, this should present no problem for assessment, as long as those values are expressed fully and reflected in the conservation response.

Modernism was a departure from earlier architectures; it forged new forms, overturned old conventions and created unfamiliar new spaces and places through progressive ideas about how to live and how to recalibrate our buildings to a changing world. It was the first truly global architecture, spanning the central decades of the 20th century and evolving into a diverse series of languages that valued similar conceptual and artistic themes. The intangible qualities of Modernism are therefore related to design intent, artistic expression, the purposeful reflection or rejection of context, and the relationship of the building to international movements.

1 Projects for listed and unlisted 20th-century buildings over the last decade have failed to properly address these intangible aspects, resulting in outcomes that do not represent conservation – partly due to the lack of an agreed approach.

In 2017 the International Council on Monuments and Sites’ 20th-century

committee, ISC20, ventured the first international standard, Approaches to the Conservation of Twentieth Century Cultural Heritage: Madrid–New Delhi Document.

This milestone has formed the basis for much recent work by Purcell; awareness of international best practice, scholarship and evolving our own expertise are the key ways we bring consistency to our approach to modern buildings.

Valuing judgement

Listing has had to evolve to accommodate modern heritage. The latest thematic survey on Postmodernism added 17 buildings dating from the 1970s and 80s to the list, and more will follow. These, and those from preceding post-war decades, pose fundamental questions about heritage protection at a time when clarity is needed about what is being valued and why.

At the National Gallery, as masterplanners and designers of new gallery spaces, Purcell recognised the importance of the Postmodern extension by Venturi Scott Brown & Associates. This was expressed before the decision to list, bringing ARCHITECTURAL PRESS ARCHIVE / RIBA COLLECTIONS

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o century has left us a more varied set of conservation challenges than the 20th century.

A vast array of new styles, alternative technologies and materials, plus diverse intellectual and creative forces have left behind a tremendous architectural legacy. Caring for that legacy and bringing equivalence to conservation efforts is a continuous intellectual and practical debate – with consensus often hard to reach. For Purcell, the question remains consistent: how can we, as architects, masterplanners and heritage consultants, assess and respond effectively to buildings of the 20th century and, in the process, bring parity to our conservation efforts on buildings of all periods?

Purcell’s commitment to improving conservation assessment and architectural responses to 20th-century buildings is manifest in recent projects and engagement across the sector: we work with communities and specialist groups to share knowledge and bring new ideas and fresh approaches to these buildings. Purcell is the first practice to have convened a 20th-century group, creating a forum allowing like-minded people throughout the sector to share information, expertise and illustrate projects. Our collaborative philosophy arises from a unique make-up that aligns the critical interpretation of the heritage consultant teams with the creative pragmatism of the project architects. For 20th-century buildings, we believe that understanding place, design intent and

LIVERPOOL METROPOLITAN CATHEDRAL

‘ Purcell’s understanding of our building and its setting is profound.

The firm’s experience in engaging with planning authorities has been invaluable. Sensitive and pragmatic is how I would describe its approach’

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PURCELL

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director, The National Gallery

assuredness to the process of change. We assessed the building as part of the wider international movement, recognising its listing potential.

At the Natural History Museum, Purcell completed the first enhanced listing for a landmark building. A Statement of Significance positioned the 1970s Palaeontology Wing in its full architectural and historic context, comparing it with similar buildings of the period and other projects by the Office of Works architects who designed it; it was the first proper study of either. The resulting enhanced listing set a hierarchy of value within the site, with the 1960s extension not considered to make an essential contribution. This has provided a greater understanding of potential for change, including removing a section to 4 make way for a progressive Niall McLaughlin scheme that will undoubtedly be valued in years to come.

At St Fagans National Museum of History, Purcell collaborated with Cadw to establish a new designation for the site, followed by a conservation management plan – bolstered by an interview with project architect John

Hilling – that established heritage value and offered guidance on a scheme to reinvigorate the museum. Purcell’s work encompassed repairing the original fabric, reinstating the architectural concept, and carefully siting new buildings that retain the structure’s profile and leave intact the important landscape. Purcell’s approach delivered the model project – one that navigated all stages of the process, from listing to completion.

As Purcell partner Jamie Coath explains: ‘Having a direct engagement with Hilling was a really rewarding, and rather unusual, opportunity to fully understand the original design, enabling us to confidently assess the significance and respond appropriately with alteration and enhancement proposals. It was a proud moment when he visited the site on completion of our work and was glowingly positive about the result.’

Articulating significance and achieving consensus

At the heart of conservation practice lies the concept of significance – that overarching theoretical umbrella that shelters historic buildings from the ‘acid rain’ of poor conservation. A range of guidance and COURTESY OF ST FAGANS NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HISTORY

legislation is used to define value: the evidential, historical, aesthetic and communal, countered by technological and spiritual values, remain the most common to articulate what makes buildings and sites important and define the parameters for heritage impact. Some have questioned the system’s fitness for purpose on 20th-century buildings, calling for a new framework that better addresses their unique qualities. In time, we may alter the rubric for assessment, but that’s unlikely to happen soon so better recognition of the current framework to deliver successful conservation is required.

Purcell has placed a complete understanding of significance at the heart of our architectural response, pushing the boundaries of the current system to account for the site’s architectural theory, historic context and material culture. Of note was how we addressed the complex significance of the Grade–II* listed Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (1967) by Sir Fredrick Gibberd.

Recognising the Gesamtkunstwerk nature of the architecture and layering the significance of the artistic, structural and architectural elements of the building under common headings, the assessment linked the significance judgements directly to a series of prioritised conservation actions.

To mend Modernism, we must understand it first; we must step beyond any reductive tendencies and ask the fundamentals: what is important about this site? Why is it the way it is? What are the active drivers in its design? What actions will deliver proportionate conservation responses?

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COURTESY OF DANISH NATIONAL ART LIBRARY, COPENHAGEN

‘ We appointed the Purcell team because they are simply the best heritage architects in the country’ Martyn Evans, Estate Development Director, The Dartington Hall Trust

building with multiple occupiers, each with a different agenda. Here the starting point has been to break the building down into functions and spaces, articulating the significance of the fabric in each, and using this to determine a series of interventions that negates the need for repeated consents.

This synthesis of articulating significance with best-practice fabric repairs signifies a brave new world based on mutual understanding and respect for the monument and what each party needs to get out of it – an approach that has relevance to buildings of all periods.

The difference with Modernism: assessing theory

The notion of ‘otherness’ continues to bedevil conservation projects for modern buildings. The fact that Modernism was inherently different in its theory and construction has meant that arguments for alteration from many quarters have been given undue latitude: It failed! It was only meant to be temporary! The architect had to change their design! It never worked properly! It can’t be converted! It’s the idea that’s important, not the fabric! It’s the fabric that’s important, not the idea!

6 These arguments have never applied to listed buildings before, so why now? In parallel, whether the ideology behind the building – be it social, political or architectural – is embodied in the fabric, and can therefore be preserved, is also moot. Here lies the intangibility of Modernism so often misinterpreted in the past – the relationship between building

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Battersea Power Station has proven to be fertile territory in advancing Purcell’s conservation approach. This massive undertaking enabled the often-claimed but rarely practised collaboration with regulatory authorities through the setting up of a conservation steering group. This provided a regular forum and enabled each stakeholder to present their concerns, share expertise and debate openly on all issues from design through construction to future maintenance. Meeting monthly since 2013, it has provided consensus on what is significant about the building and, crucially, what is not. This is vital for a project of this size and complexity, and to manage the level of intervention needed.

Ultimately, the approach transcends the conservation status quo; the welfare of the asset is based on a tacit understanding among all parties, paving the way to experiment in the approach to the building fabric and its protection.

Building on this mutual trust, Purcell has developed heritage partnership agreements that tackle the complexity of applying heritage protection to a large

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and landscape, contextual links and international movements and the artistic expression inherent in built form. If these are not ingrained in conservation efforts, responses will be unsuccessful.

Undoubtedly there may be totally ‘new’ situations that call for pioneering solutions. At Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Purcell has devised conservation techniques for dalle de verre, the technique that places pieces of coloured glass in a matrix of concrete or epoxy resin. This is the epitome of the kind of research and development that permeates Purcell’s work. Using funding from the Getty Foundation, we explored the importance of various aspects of built fabric and developed a repair technique based on traditional approaches, updated to meet the specific needs of the building.

The lantern – which forms the structural, spiritual and artistic crown of the building –has been beset with problems since completion: degraded by weathering, the resin holding the coloured glass hardened, causing fractures and water ingress.

Previous repairs had introduced flashings and mastic sealants, affecting both performance and aesthetics. In this instance, there was no precedent for repairs. However, rather than searching for a ‘new’ solution, established conservation principles were the starting point, informed by a conservation management plan that attributed high significance to the original fabric, dictating an approach of maximum retention using repair resin based on the original mix. Now, after a history dogged by notions of failure and inappropriate conservation, Purcell is repairing the mistakes of the past, providing this pivotal piece of British Modernism with the appreciation it so richly deserves.

Purcell’s design ethos arises from the same place as that for restoration and repair. At Arne Jacobsen’s 1962 Grade-I listed St Catherine’s College in Oxford, the college motto Nova et Vetera was expressed

by Jacobsen, who married modern materiality to ancient plan form with primary and secondary grids to deliver a complete work of art. Following a diligent assessment of significance and historic development, Purcell responded with a new accommodation block, delivering modest, calm buildings that complement the scale and mass of the existing structures. The new graduate centre exploits its slight geographical removal to boldly reflect Jacobsen’s interest in pure geometries, artistically reflect the grids and reference the Oxford typology of the circular plan form. Understanding does not necessarily mean constraint and, here, expressing some fundamental drivers in Modernism has resulted in a bold, expressive piece of new architecture.

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Our work on a series of iconic modern buildings has prompted us to look at how the hard-won philosophies and principles gained from our work on earlier buildings might guide us on later work and vice versa, informing our approach to all architectures.

‘New’ approaches have not always delivered successful outcomes. As the first wave of 7 conservation of modern buildings comes of of brick upset the clean lines and impacted age, the undoing of previous repairs is on this significance. In this context, Purcell increasingly a feature of our work. felt the most ‘honest’ thing was to blend in William Lescaze’s 1932 Grade-II* listed the repairs, remaining true to the original High Cross House in Dartington, Devon, is design intent. To achieve this, the selection effectively a living sculpture that happens to of new materials to match the existing needs have rooms within. This international-style to be exemplary. This led to a like-for-like house is about surface and line, which has approach, sourcing from the original brick been eroded by a series of well-intentioned, suppliers and developing forensic-like but ultimately disfiguring, interventions: techniques for producing bespoke blends coping stones introduced to parapets where – techniques we have since employed on previously there were none, crisp facades buildings of all periods. Similarly, at interrupted with flashings and weepholes St Fagans, replacement calcium silicate that would never be considered for earlier bricks were sourced from the original buildings. Purcell aims to return the purity suppliers to ensure a continuity of of the original design, stripping accretions in appearance to the repaired building. pursuit of minimal interventions that, Concrete came into its own in the modern perversely, now require much intercession. age; the technology used to repair it may be The building may have been influenced by different to that for ‘traditional’ materials many forces but, ironically, has been most but the like-for-like principle has remained affected by conservation. We are ensuring we do not perpetuate mistakes made in the past. consistent in Purcell’s approach. At St Fagans we eschewed the ‘new’ convention At the Grade-I listed De La Warr Pavilion, of using proprietary mortars and coatings in Purcell has been exploring the potential to favour of a bespoke mix of aggregates, replace the badly corroded galvanised steel binders and stone dust that matched the glazing of the iconic south window with texture and colour of the original concrete bronze. One of the most recognisable to give a seamless repair. At Battersea symbols of international Modernism, Power Station this was taken one step research indicates that Chermayeff and further by fabricating new pre-cast units to Mendelssohn, recognising the issues match the existing ones, working to the presented by the seafront location, had building’s natural junctures to invisibly intended the windows to be bronze but were insert new elements that were ‘weathered’ in constrained by the budget. This synthesis of theory and fabric repairs has the potential to situ to match the adjacent original fabric.

This materials choice was, again, prompted realise the original vision while solving an by our work on traditional buildings – we issue that has been ongoing for many years. wouldn’t use a different material for repairs Repairs need to respond to the original to those structures so why would we do so design intention; ours is a duality that sits on a modern building? theory alongside fabric as part of a holistic conservation strategy. Often the ‘honest’ repair approach has been misapplied on Back to basics: continuity, ancient and modern modern buildings – at Battersea Power Modernism may not be as simple as it looks Station, Gilbert Scott’s celebrated facades but caring for it need not be complicated. are of the highest significance; the The solutions to some of the issues facing distinctive stepped profile and fluted details 20th-century buildings, whatever their break down its vast bulk into a delicate theoretical and material make-up, lie in the interplay of light and shadow, solid and void. recalibration of our existing conservation Previous patch repairs to the huge expanses strategies and the proper application of knowledge on how to care for architectural history. Purcell’s approach is about evolving 8 complexity in understanding significance, but this doesn’t preclude a back-to-basics approach to fabric repairs.

The recurrent theme throughout Purcell’s physical conservation work on modern buildings is assessing each case on its own merits and developing new techniques where appropriate, but doing this through a lens of

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Honesty is (still) the best policy…

5. The House of the Future from 1927 – Jacobsen’s early ideas provided the source for a new Purcell building at St Catherine’s College, Oxford 6. London’s cathedral of industry – Battersea Power Station before the conservation work began 7. The incomparable De La Warr Pavilion, where Purcell is guiding conservation efforts that rediscover the original design intent 8. High Cross House at Dartington in Devon, where Purcell is reversing previous conservation efforts to bring the original house back to life

tried-and-tested conservation philosophies and principles, adapting them to suit individual circumstances and materials.

That we have reached this position owes itself to a process of careful understanding, having gone full circle to get there, learning from the mistakes of the past. Adopting and adapting existing principles creates a continuity with conservation practice past and present, bringing with it invaluable information and equipping us to deal with the future challenges.

Articulating the various significances of 20th-century buildings and sites, and expressing them, still needs critical attention from heritage consultants and architects alike. The level of sophistication in categories of significance currently operating as an industry standard are, perhaps, an easy target and could be better, but that masks the real issue – that a broad understanding of what is important about these buildings has not yet filtered through.

It may not be about changing the framework but, rather, properly applying the rubric we already have.

Purcell is investigating, innovating and collaborating with others to ensure the incredible built legacy of the recent past endures into the distant future. What sets us apart is an evolving, informed understanding of place – strengthened by the confidence to question past decisions and current philosophies. This delivers more sensitive and thought-out responses, bringing parity to our conservation efforts regardless of period. It’s all architecture to us.

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2000s

2003 St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation & Peace, London • City Heritage Society Award • Natural Stone Award • RIBA Award (Commended)

2006 Stowe House • British Construction Industry Award for Conservation • RIBA Award 2007 • Country Life Restoration of the Century Award (Marble Saloon) 2010

2007 Lady Lever Art Gallery, Bebington

Cultural

1960-today Ely Cathedral • Stone Award for the Lady Chapel Floor • Commendation for the Processional Way

Purcell’s commitment to excellence has resulted in an array of awards for a multitude of projects

Key projects and awards

Places of worship

1990s

2006 The National Gallery, London • RIBA Crown Estate Conservation Award • RIBA Inclusive Design Award (Finalist)

1990 Ebley Mill, Stroud • Civic Trust Award • RIBA Award • Royal Town Planning Institute Award for Parking Design (Commended)

2004 Christ Church, Spitalfields, London • Natural Stone Award for Repair & Restoration (Commended) • Civic Trust Award • RIBA Award

2007 Roundhay Park, Leeds • Green Apple Awards • Leeds Architectural Awards

1992 Lower Treginnis Farm for City Children, Wales • Civic Trust Award • RIBA Award • National Eisteddfod Gold Medal for Architecture

2004 Danson House, Kent • Georgian Group Award for Rescue of a Georgian Country House at Risk • RIBA Award (Commended) • Civic Trust Award (Commended)

2006 Weston Park Museum, Sheffield • RIBA 2007 • Civic Trust Award (Commended)

2008 Wentworth Castle and Stainborough Park, Stainborough • Civic Trust Special Partnership Award • RIBA White Rose Award (Special Mention) • Country Life Restoration of the Century Award 2010

1994 Castell Henllys, Pembrokeshire • RIBA Award • Civic Trust Award (Commended) • Prince of Wales Award

2004 Greatwater Boathouse, Norfolk • RIBA East Spirit of Ingenuity Award for Heritage

2007 Cusworth Hall, Doncaster

2008 Blaenavon World Heritage Resource Centre, Wales • National Eisteddfod Gold Medal for Architecture • RIBA Award

1995 Welsh Wildlife Centre, Cilgerran • British Construction Industry Award • Civic Trust Award (Commended) • RIBA Award

2004 St Paul’s Cathedral, London • Natural Stone Award for Interiors (Highly Commended) • RICS National Project of the Year 2009 • RIBA English Heritage Award for Conservation 2012

2007 Kew Palace, London • Gulbenkian Prize for Museums & Galleries (Finalist) • RICS Conservation Award • RICS National Museums & Heritage Award for Excellence

2008 St George’s Hall, Liverpool • Civic Trust Special City of Culture Award • National Lottery’s Best Heritage Award (Finalist) • Painting & Decorating Association Award

1999 Clevedon Pier, Clevedon • Civic Trust Award • National Piers Society Pier of the Year

2005 Blakesley Hall, Yardley • Civic Trust Award (Commended)

2007 Wollaton Hall, Nottingham • Nottingham Civic Society Award (Commended) • RICS Conservation Award (Commended)

2008 Wolverhampton Art Gallery • RIBA Award

2010s

2015 Malt Cross, Nottingham • RICS East Midlands Awards, Community Benefit • RICS East Midlands Awards, Building Conservation (Finalist) • RICS Awards (National), Community Benefit

2016 Cardigan Castle, Cardigan • RICS Wales Regeneration Award • RSAW Award • Channel 4 Restoration of the Year

2015 Munro Drive, Edinburgh • Scottish Design Awards (Finalist) • Herald Property Awards for Scotland (Finalist)

2016 Sacrewell Watermill, Thornhaugh • RICS East of England Project of the Year Award • Civic Trust Award AABC Conservation (Commended)

2014 Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford • Oxford Preservation Trust Award: Building Conservation • Civic Trust AABC Conservation Award • Art Fund Museum of the Year (Finalist)

2015 Newcastle Castle, Newcastle upon Tyne – Black Gate • RICS North East Renaissance Awards, Building Conservation

2016 The Grove Hotel, Watford – Cedar Suite • European Hotel Award, Interior Design - Event Spaces (Finalist) • The International Hotel & Property Award, Lobby, Public Areas, Lounge (Finalist)

2012 National Maritime Museum, London – Sammy Ofer Wing • Civic Trust Award (Commended) • LABC London Regional Building Excellence Awards: Best Community Building • RIBA London Award

2014 Penarth Pier Pavilion, Penarth • National Trust Special Places: Wales’ Official Special Place • Pier of the Year • RICS Project of the Year

2015 Clifton Cathedral, Bristol

2016 Westminster Kingsway College, London • BD Refurbishment Architect of the Year (Finalist)

2012 Tudor House Museum, Southampton • Civic Trust Award (Regional Finalist) • RICS South East Building Conservation Award • RICS South East Project of the Year Award

2014 Private residence, York

2015 The Natural History Museum, Hinzte Hall • Museum and Heritage Award (Highly Commended) 2018 • D&AD Wood Pencil Award for Special Design 2018

2016 Knole House, Sevenoaks

2013 Radcliffe Humanities (Radcliffe Infirmary), Oxford • Oxford Preservation Trust Building Conservation Award • RIBA South East Award (Finalist) • RICS South East Building Conservation Award (Finalist)

2015 British Museum, London – World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre • RICS London Awards, Tourism and Leisure • Stirling Prize shortlisted with RSHP

2016 British Museum, London – Waddesdon Bequest • RIBA London Award

2010 Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol • Bristol Civic Society Environmental Award • Landscape Institute Awards: Heritage and Conservation Award • RIBA South West Town and Country Design Awards: Conservation Award

2011 Leighton House Museum, London • RIBA London Arts & Leisure Award • RICS London Award for Conservation (Finalist) • Europa Nostra Conservation Award

2009 Athenaeum Hotel, London • Time Magazine’s 50 Best Inventions of 2009 (No 31 The Living Wall) • European Hotel Design Award for Conversion of an Existing Hotel Building (Finalist) (Finalist)

2010 Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury • Natural Stone Award for Repair and Restoration (Highly Commended) • RICS South East Building Conservation Award

2012 Coworth Park Spa, Sunningdale • Condé Nast Traveller Best Hotel Spa 2011 #5 in the world • Condé Nast Johansens 2015 Awards for Excellence. Best Hotel with Spa Award

2009 Blue Boar Quad, Christ Church, Oxford • Oxford Preservation Trust Awards (Finalist)

2010 Dillington House, The Hyde, Ilminster • RIBA Award

2012 Florence Institute, Liverpool • IHBC North West Award for Conservation • Civic Trust Award Community Recognition 2013 • RIBA North West Award 2013

2009 Cobham Park Gardens & Darnley Mausoleum, Rochester • Country Life Country House of the Year • RICS South East Conservation Award • Royal Town Planning Institute South East Region (Overall Winner)

2010 Hampton Court Palace, Base Court, Richmond upon Thames • Natural Stone Award • RICS London Project of the Year Award 2016 • Civic Trust Award AABC Conservation (Commended)

2010 Hampton Court Palace, Cumberland Art Gallery, Richmond upon Thames • RICS London Awards, Building Conservation (Finalist) • Museums and Heritage Awards, Restoration or Conservation (Finalist)

2014 CoRE (Centre of Refurbishment Excellence), Stoke-on-Trent • LABC Award for Best Change of Use • Building Magazine Project of the Year (Finalist) • RIBA West Midlands Award Education

2008 Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds • RICS Yorkshire Tourism and Leisure • Leeds Architectural Awards • Green Apple Awards

Hospitality

Commercial

2014 City College Norwich, Norwich – Creative Arts Building • Civic Trust Award • Norwich Society Design Community Award 2015

2011 Ballyfin Hotel, Ballyfin • European Hotel Design Awards: Conversion of an Existing Non-Hotel Building to Hotel Use • RICS Project of the Year Award 2012

2017 Cromford Mills • Europa Nostra Conservation Award

Future

2018 Delapré Abbey, Northampton • RICS Midlands Building Conservation Award

2018 John Wesley’s New Room, Bristol • LABC Bristol Excellence Best Public Services Building

Kresen Kernow, Redruth

Battersea Power Station, London

Manchester Museum

2018 Culzean Castle • AJ Small Projects mention

St Mary Redcliffe Church, Bristol

Clandon Park House

The Story Museum, Oxford

Hull Maritime City

Trent Park

Healthcare and wellbeing

2017 St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff • AJ Architecture Award, Cultural Project of the Year (Finalist) • RICS Wales Tourism and Leisure Award • National Eisteddfod Gold Medal

2018 The Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre

2018 Durham Cathedral Open Treasure • RIBA National Award for Cultural Buildings • RIBA North East Building of the Year 2018 • RIBA North East Conservation Award

2018 Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, Hong Kong

2018 Tropical Ravine • RICS Building Conservation • RICS Northern Ireland Project of the Year

2018 Yr Ysgwrn, Trawsfynydd • RICS Wales Building Conservation Award • RSAW Welsh Architecture of the Year • RSAW Project Architect of the Year • RSAW Building of the Year

2018 Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge • Cambridge Design & Construction Award (Finalist)

2018 Old Treasury, Melbourne

2016 Conservation school

2017 Liz Smith on Phil Spencer’s Stately Homes

Public

2017 Aerospace Bristol • AJ Architecture Award, Public Building of the Year (Finalist) • RICS South West Tourism and Leisure Award • RICS South West Project of the Year 2018 Award

Residential

Manchester Town Hall

Bristol General Hospital

National Portrait Gallery, London

Nottingham Castle

Wolverton Works

Hilde Besse, Oxford

St Catherine’s College, Oxford

‘ Conversations with Purcell are easy and open, allowing the dynamic generation of ideas.

We were delighted to win the National Portrait Gallery’s £35m development, ‘Inspiring People’.

It’s a great opportunity to see our relationship with Purcell continue to grow’ Jamie Fobert, Director, Jamie Fobert Architects

2018 Collective Ambition

We hope you have enjoyed this picture of Purcell, published at an exciting moment as we move into our eighth decade as a practice committed to developing new and innovative approaches to architecture, masterplanning and heritage consultancy.

From modest beginnings, today’s work includes an increasing wealth of varied projects, including the design and delivery of awardwinning contemporary new buildings and the masterplanning of large-scale sites.

Regardless of how diverse our portfolio has become, however, we can still – and always do – trace roots of each place back to its origins, deploying our innate sensitivity to produce the very best design in context.

If you would be interested in working with us, please contact us via www.purcelluk.com

Purcell Commissioning Editor Rob Gregory Editorial Team David Hills Heather Jermy Jane Kennedy Jess McCulloch Liz Smith Tom Brigden

The Architectural Review Contributing Editor Jeremy Melvin Editorial Director Paul Finch Editor Manon Mollard Art Editor Tom Carpenter Production Editor Cecilia Thom Production Manager Paul Moran Business Development Manager Elizabeth Burke

‘ Working with Purcell was an amazing chance to bring together two approaches to design.

Not only was it an exciting, challenging way to work but also a way to create richer projects and offer clients the best of many worlds’ Sam Jacob

‘ We were lucky to work with brilliant individuals from Purcell, who helped frame arguments in favour of new proposals at Auckland Castle. It gave us confidence to use history, not as an obstacle, but as a spur to original and ambitious new architecture’ Niall McLaughlin

Monograph produced by The Architectural Review November 2018 ISBN 978-0-9955341-0-0