2019 SUMMER EXCURSION: Yorkshire Artful Delights

Emily Watson words and photos
The Architecture Club member

This year’s Architecture Club Summer Excursion took the Club to Yorkshire, home to a unique collection of galleries and sculpture collections – and the birthplace of pioneering British sculptors, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. The excursion also coincides with Yorkshire Sculpture International (YSI) a 100-day festival that is part of a huge 6-year cultural investment programme, Leeds 2023, originally conceived as a bid for the European Capital of Culture.

We visited two of the YSI partnering venues; the acclaimed Hepworth Gallery Wakefield designed by David Chipperfield and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park – in particular to visit the recently completed Weston Building by young emerging architects, Feilden Fowles. But not before a quick diversion to Castleford Bridge, a 130m long footbridge designed by McDowell+Benedetti. We were fortunate to have Renato Benedetti with us to describe the design for this elegant structure, which unites the north and south bank of Castleford’s riverbank communities.

The second stop of the day was the Hepworth Gallery, which in its first year of opening, welcomed an unprecedented number of visitors, over 500,000, and is now in its eighth year of programming. In 2017 it was crowned Museum of the Year and has maintained a constant programme of change to keep attracting visitors year on year and ensure it continues to contribute positively to the local community.

The group met in the Hepworth Cafe, which has seen a dramatic rise in customers, thanks to it’s re-launch in 2017 with a local chef serving up good coffee and a seasonal menu. We were given access to the new Learning Centre, refurbished by Feilden Fowles in collaboration with Chipperfield, to improve it’s functionality and address issues of acoustics, lighting and temperature control, storage, and add playful touches through arrays of brightly coloured pendant lights.

The gallery spaces housed on the upper floor of the building are light and airy, with strong visual connections to the weir outside through large picture windows. I’m told that exhibitions are simple to curate and that the gallery spaces speak for themselves which is a testament to this exceptionally crafted building.

The perception of the gallery from the residents of Wakefield is a work in progress and it has been described as a castle surrounded by a moat, which is understandable. But here on my third visit I never fail to be impressed by the lavender-grey monolith rising out of the River Calder from the approach over the footbridge. Unfortunately most people’s first arrival experience is by vehicle from a busy road after a sharp u-turn which is particularly uninviting at the moment due to the construction of the latest piece of place making, the new Hepworth Wakefield Garden (I was asked by a passer by where the entrance was). However, this will be vastly improved once the garden opens later this year. The final phase of the Wakefield Waterfront Master Plan will be completed with the regeneration of the elegant Rutland Building and surrounding textile factories into a residential and leisure complex.

Our next stop several miles from Wakefield down the M1 was The Weston, the new eastern entrance and visitor centre to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The building is partially nested into a meadowy slope, located in the bowl of a former quarry used to construct the nearby Bretton Hall. It feels very of the soil from which it emerges and could easily be mistaken for rammed earth. Instead layers of rigorously tested concrete mixes have been poured to form a highly layered and textured surface to the long low uniform wall. Passing through the doorway midway in the wall, the hallway space is a wonderful bright and airy liminal moment, between the harsh noisy environment of the car park and the tranquil rolling grounds of the park, subtly embraced by the gentle curvature of the timber framed glazed elevation.

The Weston certainly doesn’t feel like a traditional visitor centre and we were treated to a very civilised lunch in the restaurant. There is a very strong sense of a physical connection between the building, the site and the landscape that deservedly won the competition pitch for Feilden Fowles and subsequently local and national 2019 RIBA Awards, so I am not surprised there are rumours it is up for another very highly coveted award.

Meandering through the deer park we passed several large scale sculptures by Damien Hirst, part of the inaugural YSI exhibition, along with classic pieces by Henry Moore and the Deer Shelter Skyspace by James Turrell. The visit ended with a look into the original visitor centre and Underground Gallery by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, and Adam Khan’s concrete enclosure for David Hiorn’s crystalline Seizure installation.

I will definitely be returning to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and indeed Yorkshire as I feel like we barely scratched the surface in one day.

Thank you to Olivia Colling, Kath Knight, Claire Lilley, Fergus Feilden and Thom Butler for their insight into these fantastic buildings, and special thanks to Claire Curtice and Rowena Ellims for organising such a brilliant trip.