Autumn 2006

Issue Number: 92

Site specific: H. T. Cadbury Brown RA

Adam Caruso admires the sensitivity of fellow architect H.T. Cadbury-Brown, who designed the Academy’s Library

The Library of the Royal Academy is a late work by H.T. Cadbury-Brown, created in a space that was previously a gallery dedicated to classical sculpture. I was impressed by this interior, by the way its dark-stained bookshelves, grey-steel
The Royal Academy Library designed by H. T. Cadbury-Brown RA gallery and high-gloss lacquered furniture engaged with the scale and tectonic qualities of the existing room, with its robust classical entablature and beautiful polychrome tiled floor. The round roof lights that are Cadbury-Brown’s major structural intervention are formally bold, but nevertheless respectfully adhere to the existing bay structure of the ceiling, so that both old and new gain in presence. In the late 1980s, when this project was executed, it was more common to respond to such a situation with broad postmodern formalism, or with an essay in the dialectic between old and new. The Library is more ambiguous and richer than either of these strategies. The new interventions were carefully judged in relation to what was already there, in terms of their scale, material and general spatial qualities. In other projects by Cadbury-Brown, one could often discern this attention to the specific circumstances of each project. One also sees an equal energy given to the consideration of a modest interior as to large urban ensembles. This kind of sensitivity and concern for propriety is unusual, and is an instructive antidote to the size and speed of so much contemporary architecture.

Elegant Variation: The Architecture of H. T. Cadbury-Brown RA, Tennant Room, John Madejski Fine Rooms, Royal Academy of Arts (020 7300 8000), 12 Oct–21 Jan; the Library and Print Room are accessible to visitors 10am–1pm and 2–5pm Tues–Fri for the duration of Elegant Variation

Author:

Adam Caruso

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