Haworth Tompkins’ refurbishment and extension of the University of London’s Warburg Institute entices the public with a reinstatement of its early intentions
The Warburg Institute – one of the more reticent buildings in Charles Holden’s masterplan for the University of London – elicits varying reactions from passers-by. Some scholars shiver with the reputations, histories and meanings wrapped up in this hallowed space. Others have a mild familiarity with the Warburg name and prestige, but uncertain understandings of what goes on behind this anonymous facade. And the bulk of us, academic or otherwise, walk past oblivious. It is this diversity that Bill Sherman, director of the Warburg since 2017, is seeking to address with the £14.5 million ‘Warburg Renaissance’ – a once-in-a-generation attempt ‘to draw in people who have never entered before’.
The institute is dedicated to the study of global cultural history and the role of images in society, exploring how memories of the past shape the present. It evolved out of the extraordinary library gathered by art historian Aby Warburg in Hamburg during the early years of the 20th century. Having gained a purpose-built home there in 1927, it transferred to London in 1933 to escape the Third Reich. Despite becoming part of the University of London in 1944, both books and institute continued a peripatetic existence, while offering a base for scholars of the heft of Ernst Gombrich and Francis Yates. It finally arrived at this permanent seven-storey Bloomsbury home in 1958.
Holden’s introverted design, with its Neo-Georgian and Neoclassical elements, received a poor reception from critics, Nikolaus Pevsner comparing it to a telephone exchange. In practice, it has proved well-wearing and popular with users, but urgently required an infrastructural overhaul and organisational tweaks to reflect the institute’s changing priorities. In this context, the choice of Haworth Tompkins as architect is hardly a surprise, given its previous successes reorganising and respecting historic buildings in the cultural sphere, plus its much-appreciated attachment to large-scale physical modelling. The National Theatre, London Library and Victoria & Albert Museum have all benefited from this meticulous approach.
In most aspects, the result is deliberately low-key, respecting the original architecture: its intent, qualities and quirks. Heating, lighting and digital infrastructures have been largely replaced – from water pipes embedded in the floor slabs in the 1950s, to such 1990s endowments as dropped ceilings, underfloor heating, strip lighting and carpets. Much-needed attention has also been given to roofing and drainage, the former covering top-floor galleries currently used by the Slade School of Fine Art. These once housed an offshoot of the Courtauld Institute, which had originally been intended to inhabit a matching block alongside.
The most challenging aspects of the renaissance, however, have involved, first, re-establishing the tight relationship between the institute’s intellectual ambitions and the building’s architecture, which has frayed significantly over the decades. Secondly, the project needed to address additional needs that were overlooked within the original plan or have since emerged – ‘what has been lost or abandoned along the way’ in Sherman’s words.
The most obvious of the latter is the new ground-floor 185m² gallery running parallel to, and visible from, the street. Replacing a line of offices that ran alongside a narrow, double-loaded corridor, this modest but welcoming space with suspended screens is accessible to the general public. Harking back to the communal spaces of the institute’s Hamburg home, and to Warburg’s commitment to debate and display, it increases the transparency of the institute’s physical and intellectual pitches. A strong series of exhibitions has been lined up, and the gallery affords a permanent home for Edmund de Waal’s Library of Exile installation.
The entrance foyer has also been refreshed, expanding the claustrophobic original by removing its glazed reception desk, and siting a larger open replacement further back, with joinery echoing Holden’s design. This allows those without reading cards through the institute’s forbidding doors for the first time, gaining immediate access to the gallery. Through tall windows, visitors can see across the external courtyard to the main reading room, and into Haworth Tompkins’ one major addition to the plan – a two-storey structure inserted into the courtyard to provide 330m² of extra space.
Clad in grey bricks on its main facade, this structure otherwise consists of exposed concrete inside and out, echoing Holden’s industrial buildings. Above is a public 140-seat auditorium, with an ellipse in crisp concrete on the ceiling. This pays homage to the shape of the Hamburg reading room and its skylight, reflecting Aby Warburg’s exploration of the coupling of astrology and astronomy. A reading room for the special collections is housed below, adjacent to the archives, periodicals and photographic collection around the perimeter, which have been reorganised and now adhere to best conservation practice, while unlocking space, and potential, elsewhere. Two light wells offer natural light, enhanced by the original glazed white tiles cladding the courtyard’s interior.
This regained space in Holden’s building is used to increase room for readers, insert teaching facilities, and firmly reinstate Warburg’s division of his library into four subjects: Image, Word, Orientation and Action. As at Hamburg, each is given a specific physical location in a manner that Fritz Saxl, the first director, called ‘a body of living thought’, and the current director calls ‘proto-digital’. Now, each one occupies its own storey, with auxiliary rooms occupying the remaining floor area as the collection permits, and the various functions flowing into each other. Image, for instance, occupies the entire first floor bar librarians’ offices. Word, one storey above, leaves space for meeting rooms and academic offices, including the director’s. Stacks have been returned to their original orientation, perpendicular to the windows, allowing natural light to penetrate, expanding shelving by 40%, and providing space to accommodate 20 years of future acquisitions. The newly visible windows, with secondary glazing, give views over Bloomsbury, while offering a friendlier facade to passersby.
Throughout the project, as much of the original woodwork has been retained or unveiled as possible, from the elegant fluted columns and shelving in the main reading room to the woodblock floors scattered throughout. Sapele additions, such as the acoustic panels in the lecture theatre, are similarly sensitive. This care – along with a dash of ‘architectural surgery’ – is representative of all Haworth Tompkins’ adjustments to Holden’s architecture, which are intelligent, practical, pragmatic and respectful of both atmosphere and fabric. Will they draw punters through those forbidding doors? Let’s hope so.