Desain Rumah Minimalis: BURRELL MUSEUM

In the period 1970-72. the RIBA sponsored a Iwo-stage architectural competition fora museum to house a large art collection gifted to Glasgow in 1944 by Sir William Burrell. I n 1972. at the end of stage two. the assessors selected the winning scheme by Brit Andresen. Barry Gasson and John Meunier. then teaching colleagues at Cambridge University School of Architecture. From 1972 the scheme was further developed until 1976 when the project was indefinitely postponed due to a shortfall in funding. By the time the project recommenced several years later, the original competition team was dispersed and the building was completed by Barry Gasson Architects and opened in 1983.

BURRELL MUSEUM

The Burrell Collection, extraordinary for its size, range and quality, includes tapestries, carpets, furniture and architectural fragments such as stone arches and timber panelling, as well as collections of paintings, prints, ceramics, glass, bronzes, armour and other artefacts.

A sloping field in Pollock Park, part of the Old Pollock Estate originally belonging to the Maxwell family. 20 minutes from the Glasgow city centre, offered a choice of building sites within the grassed area, contained on all sides by trees. A site for the building was selected adjacent to a stand of mature trees on the southern slope of North Wood which offered shaded and seasonal views of the woodland floor, and on the west revealed a screened view of a path leading to Pollock House.

The intentions of the competition design were for a building conceived of as a large home designed specifically for this unique collection, set in a delightful park landscape. A primary architectural intention was to establish relations between art and nature by orchestrating juxtapositions between artefacts in the collection and the immediate landscape. Views to the landscape would also provide relief from museum fatigue and offer seasonal changes of scene for returning visitors.

Resolving conflict between opening the museum to the landscape and daylight, yet conserving artefacts vulnerable to deterioration from ultraviolet light and to theft, became a driving factor in the design. The long glazed wall pressed up against the full length of the northern stand of mature chestnuts and sycamores in the lower corner of the field takes advantage of shaded views in summer. This 'walk in the woods' is intended to surprise on entering the main gallery and acts to orient visitors along the museum's daylit perimeter circulation.

juxtaposing the collection with the landscape included various strategies in the early design, such as setting the two Gothic stone tracery windows, with their stylised plant forms, against a view of the tracery of the western trees. Secondary circulation routes, perpendicular to the 'walk in the woods', create opportunities for connections between the interior tapestry gallery, with its textile depictions of medieval woodland scenes, and the exterior, animated landscape of North Wood.

Creating a context for the larger architectural artefacts in the collection was also influential in ordering the scale and materials of the building and in forming its character. A daylit courtyard, part of the entry sequence, provides a sense of exteriority and focus to the group of three rooms built as replicas of William Burrell's principal rooms at Hutton Castle. Many of the collection's stone arches and windows, alienated from their original contexts, were incorporated into museum walls to restore something of their functional role and invite an experience of these architectural elements in use.

RUMAH MINIMALIS