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Avery Associates Architects
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The museum is intended to bring together several of the town's existing collections plus a new one in celebration of the recent discovery of the burial treasures of an Anglo-Saxon prince.
The site is a splendid cliff-side location within sight of the towns famous pier, reputedly the longest pleasure pier in the world.
The first approach to the design was to create a new route from top to bottom of the cliff and to bed this into the site contours. This created the opportunity for an external (public) route that zig-zagged down the cliff face and crossed at intervals over the museum via terraces in the manner of those at Sansoucci in Potsdam. It also crossed over a second (private) route that ran down in a giant cascade of steps intended as a social meeting space in the manner of the Spanish Steps in Rome. The steps taper to the bottom to create a visual fore-shortening and provide the solar energy that powers the stack-effect ventilation system for the entire building.
The second approach was to express this route more dynamically by detaching the museum from its landscape and creating thereby a singular form connected only tenuously to the cliff top by a glass bridge.
The museum is a white glass cube and double-walled for solar powered ventilation. Its proportions are 3:4 and square on plan and the bridge pierces the building at the golden cut (0.618 of the width). This defines the major and minor spaces and is marked by a spiral staircase much like that at the Bexhill on Sea Pavilion by Mendelsohn and Chermeyev.
The third approach was to take this a stage further and, as the coast here is extremely shallow and waves do not form a significant threat, to relocate the museum to the water's edge. The impetus for this was that once disengaged from the issues of the cliff, the principal influence was the estuary.
Southend is at the mouth of the Thames estuary and the Anglo-Saxons were not alone in using it as an easy way to invade the country. For this reason it has long been heavily defended and in similar such places, the Solent approaches to Southampton and Portsmouth for example, the mouths of such estuaries have long been guarded by forts. The museum may be seen therefore as a sentinel, put there to guard the environment of the estuary and to keep safe its precious contents.
Avery Associates Architects © 2009 |
