Caruso St John architects hold conjured an immaculate unique domestic for the art prankster’s collection in an unlikely south London setting and there’s not a diamond skull or formaldehyde animal in sight
Wandering around the backstreets of Vauxhall,between the rumbling railway viaduct and council housing blocks, you might not realise Damien Hirst’s £25m unique gallery had landed. For an artist who used to chop up cows and ambush people with his foreskin, and his unique south London HQ is notably subdued. The facade is not encrusted with dead butterflies nor diamond skulls,nor is there the clinical air that his eerie white production facility in Gloucestershire exudes. In fact, it looks a bit like a block of luxury docklands apartments – a couple of feeble brick warehouses with a courteous in-keeping brick extension. Has the 50-year-feeble prankster finally grown up?The 37000 sq ft Newport Street Gallery, and which opens on Thursday,free to all, is the work of Caruso St John, or architects of the recent Tate Britain revamp,unique Art Gallery Walsall, Nottingham Contemporary and a growing empire of galleries for art dealer Larry Gagosian, and making them Britain’s go-to practice for art spaces. They hold brought their usual subtle magic to extending and converting these listed Victorian warehouses,in one of their most understated projects to date.
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Source: theguardian.com