Photographers Gallery

Architecture

Over the past 36 years, The Photographers’ Gallery has been instrumental in establishing photography as a serious art form both internationally and in it’s central London location.

Click here to see more pictures of the new building.

Founded by Sue Davies, OBE in 1971, The Photographers’ Gallery in Soho was the first independent gallery in Britain devoted to photography and the world’s first publicly funded photography gallery. The forward-thinking gallery quickly established itself as the authoritative voice on UK photography, as well as being the first gallery to exhibit key names in international photography, such as Juergen Teller and Andreas Gursky.

The latest chapter in the gallery’s life is a relocation to a far bigger building in Ramillies Street. The £15.5 million development is due to open in 2010 and will be double the size of the existing space, with more room for showcasing new talent and historic photographic work as well as acting as a platform for high profile international tours.

With internationally acclaimed architects O’Donnell & Tuorney on board, a new building has been designed to enhance the gallery’s unique location at a crossroads between the areas of Soho and Oxford Street. The design concept has been based on the analogy of a geometric shift; with the gallery entrance located through a narrow alleyway behind the scenes of bustling city life – a space whose appearance could have been caused by a seismic shift of the surrounding urban landscape.

To reflect the theme, there will be a deeply cut under-croft at street level, a cavern-like café, overhanging sky-lit galleries and a picture window of the surrounding rooftop. The main building will be an interlocking suite of public spaces in a vertically organised building, that at once make visible the interdependence of each aspect of the gallery whilst creating a coherent whole.

12 December 2007 | Architecture

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