If you write about buildings you’re sometimes shown the makeovers of grand national institutions. You’re told that tens of millions of pounds’ worth of work is absolutely necessary to put right the inadequacies of previous projects 20 or more years ago. If you write about buildings for long enough, you get to see the makeovers of the makeovers you saw last time around. Which, I suspect, will be the fate of the National Gallery’s plans to remodel the Sainsbury Wing, a unique and characterful extension to its 1830s building that was completed in 1991, built to house the gallery’s collection of early renaissance paintings.
The National Gallery’s management is trying to make the Sainsbury Wing the permanent main entrance to the whole vast complex, something it was never meant to be, in the process blasting its interiors with blandness. Eight past presidents of the Royal Institute of British Architects have protested, comparing it to “an airport lounge”, as has the Twentieth Century Society. The project is due to be considered by Westminster city council’s planning committee. It can spare the gallery the future awkwardness of having to redo its redo by refusing it permission now.
