Nautical but nice

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 1994 by Penny McGuire

The temporary ticket off ice for the summer opening of Buckingham Palace was designed by Michael Hopkins & Partners. Now packed away until the next season, it is a finely crafted structure reminiscent of English summers and sailing ships. An airy fabric canopy with masts, spars and rigging billows over a long wooden cabin as smoothly detailed as that of a hull. On site, beneath the trees in Green Park, it had an air of being both transitory and sturdily present; substantial enough to withstand the impact of over a quarter of a million visitors who bought tickets from the building for the Palace last summer. The curving geometry of the cabin responds to the curve of the, site, whose focus is the circular form of the memorial to Queen Victoria, a most substantial monarch. The references, temporal and contextual, are subtle; and the ambiguities catch at the subconscious.

Buckingham Palace is now open to the public in August and September when the Royal Family takes its holidays. The brief asked for a prefabricated structure that could be taken down and stored away when not in use. Though temporary, the structure had to be durable, with a life of five years. Such constraints and the fact that this was to be a summer building suggested lightweight construction; boat building, (of high-performance craft such as yachts and rowing sculls), with its continuing traditions of craft and summery associations, supplied the technology and an aesthetic that responds with grace to a site weighed down by history and tradition -- and huge numbers of tourists.

The building contains six teller positions, a lobby and an office and is 15 metres long-too long to be transported in one piece. Made of western red cedar, it was prefabricated, brought to the site in two parts and bolted together with the minimum amount of fuss. When the season finishes, the cabin can be easily split apart, loaded on to a low trailer and towed away, leaving few traces of its existence. Its construction consists of a basic ribbed carcase clad externally with lap-jointed cedar strips, detailed so as to be perfectly flush. Internally, ribs have been left exposed. Yacht varnish applied over the timbers intensifies the warm colour of the wood. The cabin is surrounded by a softwood timber deck on adjustable feet.

The canopy roof provides both shade and shelter and signals the building's presence. Its design, employing a white, translucent and lightweight acrylic fabric, used' in sail-making, was inspired by the tensile canopy at Lords, (AR September '87) but its components are less sophisticated.

The fabric is held in position by masts and spars and supported by a series of flitched 'coat hangers'. Cables anchored to concrete blocks buried in the gravel stabilise and tension the structure. Detailing, such as the stainless steel connection plates spliced into timber spars, derives from that of yachts.

The client, the Royal Collection, and the situation may give this scheme an importance out of proportion to its scale; but in miniature, it does bring into sharp focus the practice's enjoyment of structure and material and their austere and poetic use to create a presence and sense of place. By such means is the prosaic transcended.