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In designing The Hepworth Wakefield, David Chipperfield Architects responded imaginatively to the gallery’s waterfront setting. The building complements the scale and form of the existing industrial buildings and, like them, appears to rise out of the River Calder. The gallery’s location on the river’s edge also allows it to apply new forms of renewable energy by sourcing the majority of its heating and cooling from the river’s flow. The gallery’s façade has been constructed of pigmented concrete which was created in-situ. This gives the building a sculptural appearance, which echoes the shapes and forms in many of Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures.

David Chipperfield: Our starting point was Wakefield Art Gallery: the series of small domestic rooms used to display the city’s collection, while limiting for a public gallery, nevertheless provided a natural, intimate context that suited the small scale nature of much of the existing collection. This interested us.

By considering a new home for the collection we were then led to a proposal for an internal sequence of rooms of varying sizes to house the collection and the other public spaces. While maintaining a consistent character, these rooms would differ in their proportion and the location of their openings; roof lights for natural light and side windows would provide views and orientation to the outside.

David Chipperfield: The demands placed on galleries in terms of the conservation of artwork displayed has in the past led to a kind of ‘black-box’ solution to gallery spaces which, although ideal for the conservation of artwork, is often less satisfactory for the visitor.

At The Hepworth Wakefield we have worked with the curators and the specialist consultants to improve on this response by looking at ways of introducing daylight into the gallery spaces which do not compromise the conservation conditions for the artworks on display.

Through careful consideration of the location and size of openings, we have been able to locate windows in the gallery spaces that orient the visitor and provide views outside to the river or to the garden. In addition we have created ‘slot lights’ in the gallery roof that allow controlled daylight into the galleries at high level, animating the gallery spaces without distracting the viewer from the artworks on display below.

David Chipperfield: The gallery façade is constructed of pigmented, in-situ concrete. The intention is to create a smooth, continuous finish that allows the natural material qualities give character to the overall appearance.

Concrete is an inherently strong, robust material which has for us positive associations with solidity and permanence. Casting it on site means we are able to create large monolithic walls and roofs that emphasise the geometric quality of the building. Adding pigment creates an unfamiliar appearance which we hope will be as interesting to look at close up as it will from a distance.