British Academy balances grand tradition and modern needs

The British Academy is headquartered in one of the most regal and architecturally celebrated parts of the capital. A corner townhouse in John Nash’s Carlton House Terrace, sited at the end of the architect’s grand urban sequence from Regents’ to St James’ Park, the interior of 10 Carlton House is as grand and ornately decorated as the rich classicism of Nash’s facades would lead a visitor to expect. 

Upon entering, however, that visitor faces an opulent, unexpected twist. Nash’s original layout – once home to then prime minister William Gladstone – was configured around a central lightwell. In the 1920s, working for the Ridley family, architects Detmar Blow and Fernand Billerey radically transformed the building, replacing Nash’s central atrium with a rotunda above a sweeping black marble staircase, illuminating the ground floor from the piano nobile. To the rear, a servant’s staircase makes use of the split-level site, leading to a lower-ground level – once stabling and delivery access to the Mall. Formerly one of 18 homes in the terrace, the Academy is now tightly hemmed in with illustrious cultural neighbours: the ICA wraps the side and back, the Royal Society of Painters is next door, and the Royal Society’s is ensconced in a mirror-image pavilion-like property across Waterloo Place.

Being in the heart of London’s tourist, political and royal district adds cachet, but has brought complications since the British Academy occupied the property in 1987. While its rooms were grand and generous, they did not allow for disabled access throughout, and environmental services and acoustics were not suitable for modern functions; an event in which the Archbishop of Canterbury was due to deliver a talk urgently had to be decamped to another space after a mass band struck up outside.

Wright & Wright’s works to the house might not initially be obvious to the visitor entering from the street – though a wheelchair user will immediately realise improvement with a new independently operated access lobby. The ground floor has been opened with access improved throughout, part of a strategy to retain grandeur while bringing transparency and reducing a sense of stuffiness; the Academy was aware that the building was intimidating to some, especially as the organisation works to invite new public audiences as well as neighbouring organisations and corporate clients. As it relies on private hires to fund its work and support free public event programmes, a key part of Wright & Wright’s work was to transform the lower-ground floor into a suite of event spaces.

These spaces in the reimagined lower-ground floor are accessed through a new staircase lobby, carefully designed as a clear desire route while acting as an architectural segue between the entrance lobby’s opulence and the more mannered, modern spaces below. Its stone floor, with a black geometric pattern referencing Billerey & Blow’s scheme, leads to a new, compact staircase where the architecture shifts to a more mannered palette and detailing, picking up proportions and forms from Nash’s original structure.

What was once a cluttered basement, requiring six months of painstaking demolition of mezzanines, is now a double-height arrangement of three main presentation spaces, adding 469m² of usable space for events. The Wohl Room and The Lecture Room, complete with a vast digital screen, are connected through double doors to give spatial flexibility for different needs.
 

An umber corridor brings new connections across the plan and improved means of egress, also connecting through to the prime presentation room, The SHAPE Space, replete with a one-off curved-end projection wall behind the speaker’s platform. This newly created realm has a deliberately contemporary finish, drawing reference from and allowing a new reading of the original structure – most evidently with the main arched opening into The Wohl Room that mirrors a Nash window. The neat finish conceals a complete overhaul of the services, now with natural ventilation and acoustic control, while on the lower-ground floor Historic England permitted new double glazing, sufficient to keep out the noise of the loudest marching band.