A competition-winning scheme for a new build art and sculpture gallery on the banks of the River Irwell in Radcliffe, Greater Manchester. Designed in 2006 in collaboration with David Adjaye, the gallery was conceived as the cultural anchor of the Sun Quarter regeneration — a £55 million masterplan including 330 apartments, 5,000 sqm of retail, a bus station and a market — selected by Bury Metropolitan Borough Council ahead of more than sixty other submissions.
Original 2006 competition render — gallery interior with Rückriem stones set between the colonnade and timber wall
The 580 sqm gallery was designed as the permanent home for a body of slab-like stone sculptures donated by the German artist Ulrich Rückriem. An adjacent two-level building extended the cultural programme with further gallery space and a bar, woven into the housing and public realm of the wider quarter.
The defining gesture is a long colonnade running along the river — concrete columns 9.5 metres high and 64 metres long — a quiet, monumental edge that holds the development against the water and sets the tempo for the gallery within. As Maurice put it at the time, "It's a very simple concept, but will create a complex series of spaces between the development and the water."
The architectural language is restrained and material — board-marked concrete, brick, and warm timber linings — building a quiet container for sculpture. Rückriem's stones, weighted and cut, demanded a building that would not compete with them. The gallery is conceived as a counterweight to the work it holds: heavy, calm, exact.
Courtyard between the gallery and the housing, with Rückriem stones set into the public landscape
Drawings and visualisations: Studio Maurice Shapero in collaboration with Adjaye Associates