The architect excels in modifying buildings like Britain’s National Portrait Gallery with a subtle hand
The new entrance to Britain’s National Portrait Gallery is built on thin air. You approach its palazzo-like façade from Charing Cross Road, cross an elegant public plaza and pass through doors decorated with bronzes by Tracey Emin. In your last few steps, you probably didn’t notice that the plaza, which began on solid ground, has transformed into a bridge. Its seamless carpet of granite takes you across a deep moat and into the museum without fanfare.
Fobert’s artful hand is everywhere. But to see it requires a close look. The first step is into a broad lobby space where a cluster of busts look out from their plinths, among them a cheerful Nelson Mandela. The floor is paved with textured concrete studded with hunks of golden-veined marble. That paving is a clear homage to the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa, whose work, like Fobert’s, intentionally mingled the historic and the contemporary.
The new main entrance hall at the National Portrait Gallery features busts, including one of Nelson Mandela, and a floor paved with textured concrete studded with hunks of golden-veined marble.Where Fobert’s design removed sections of the façade’s granite and limestone to turn windows into doors, the stone is cut on the diagonal, recalling chamfered corners in the building’s original design.
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