On Site - Page 2 of 3 - Jamie Fobert Architects

Our new building at Charleston is starting to take shape. Cross-laminated timber elements which have been fabricated off-site are now being installed piece by piece.

Reference is made in both form and materiality to the historic barns of the farmhouse site, but at the same time employing modern fabrication techniques.

Yesterday, Tate hosted a press launch to announce that the new Tate St Ives will be opening to the public on 14 October 2017, with double the existing exhibition space. With great excitement, curators revealed that the first exhibition in JFA’s new gallery will be a solo show by artist Rebecca Warren.

Jamie and project architect Matthew Whittaker shared our design with the gathered press. Dezeen gives a descriptive account of how we are channelling St Ives’ beautiful light into our submerged gallery.

More of the faience cladding has been installed at Tate St Ives. We can now begin to see how our rooftop pavilion will look once it is complete.

The ceramic tiles are hand glazed, with beautiful natural variation and they are paired with anodised aluminium for the trims and intermediate elements.

In form and materiality, the pavilion has a quality and richness of expression appropriate to and indicative of its gallery use. It is designed to be visually interesting not only from close proximity but also from a distance, since the pavilion is the only element of the new building which is visible within the town of St Ives.

In order to enjoy and learn from the project at this critical stage of construction, the whole JFA team visited the site at Kettle’s Yard. After looking at the construction drawings together, we walked from the existing Leslie Martin building through to the reconfigured galleries, then from the excavated basement education room up through the new building to the second floor, with its completed roof beams.

We are very grateful to the builders, SDC, who accommodated us all for the afternoon.

There were celebrations in Cambridge yesterday at the ‘topping out’ ceremony for our new building for Kettle’s Yard. The completed project will include a four-floor education wing, two remodelled galleries, a café, and a new entrance.

Kettle’s Yard director Andrew Nairne expressed his delight at the occasion: “Being able to stand in what will be the new galleries and education spaces is so exciting. We can now get a real sense of what the new Kettle’s Yard will feel like and all the opportunities it will bring to welcome new audiences.”

Looking ahead to May, Jamie will be giving a site tour at Charleston as part of the annual Charleston Festival.

The Centenary Project is the most ambitious building project ever undertaken by the Charleston Trust. It will see the building of a new exhibition gallery, collection store, research studio and education studio as well as the restoration of the existing Grade 2 listed barns.

Jamie will lead the tour with the on-site project manager Terry Reeves and Charleston’s Director Alistair Burtenshaw.

Friday 26th May

10:30am

Charleston, Firle, Lewes, East Sussex, BN8 6LL

On 15th February, Jamie will be giving a special one-off tour of Luker House for a limited number of guests. Services Engineer, Henry Luker, and his wife Andrea commissioned this generously-sized family home in the village of Barnes in South West London. Luker House won an RIBA Award in 2014 and was shortlisted for the RIBA Manser Medal for best house.

Tickets are available through Open City and this event supports their pioneering education programmes.

Wednesday 15th February

18:30 – 19:30 or/
19:45 – 20:45

Luker House, London SW13

The ceramic tiles have arrived at Tate St Ives, for the cladding of our rooftop pavilion. The tiles have been designed to echo the hues of the sea and the sky and to reference the local tradition of ceramic artists such as Bernard Leach.

Todd Logstaffe-Gowan, the landscape designer for our house in Trinidad, has shared some photographs of the site today. We are delighted to see the garden and its lagoon looking so lush and welcoming. The travertine-clad house is almost complete.

This panoramic view of construction in progress at Tate St Ives today shows the amazing context of the site. The beautiful coastal landscape makes for a very striking backdrop to the work but also brings its own challenges, since the sea brings unpredictable and strong winds and rain.

Over the past three years, we have been working to create the interiors and furnishings for a new department store for client DFS inside the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, an extraordinary, historic building beside the Rialto Bridge in Venice. The project is now complete and on 1 October the store opened its doors to the public for the first time.

Our vision was to create a wonderful journey through the majestic rooms of the Fondaco, with each level presenting new forms, geometries and materials. The inserted new works respond not only to the products on display but also to Venetian crafts, the historicism of the Fondaco building, and the city of Venice itself. We sought to create a “conversation” between old and new.

Photography: Matteo De Fina.

Meanwhile, in St Ives, there’s now a freshly screeded concrete floor in our main gallery space. When the rooflights are fully installed, beautiful Cornish sunlight will fill this 500m2, column-free volume.

Outside, the windows have been installed and the contractors are beginning the installation of the external cladding.

It is an exciting point in time for our project at Charleston in East Sussex, once the home and country meeting place of the Bloomsbury Group. The groundworks are now underway at the farmyard site and CFA piling has commenced.

Designed as part of the Centenary Project that aims to safeguard Charleston’s heritage, our proposal will provide a new gallery, collection store and improved visitor facilities.

Our house in Trinidad is almost complete.

The crisp, square-set form is now clad in beautiful Travertine. The contrasting lush, tropical garden, designed by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, is being planted and the form of the “jungle lagoon” swimming pool can be seen here in construction in the foreground.

The light chambers on the roof of our new gallery for Tate St Ives are now being poured – captured here by the Clerk of Works, as the sea mists roll in!

Spring sunshine streams through the newly-poured concrete roof beams which span the 16.5m width of the new gallery at Tate St Ives.

Our proposal for these beams was developed from the fishing lofts adopted by the St Ives artists in the 1940s, which were rough constructions in stone with exposed timber joists for their ceilings. Above the concrete beams will sit six large light chambers diffusing the beautiful light of St Ives which drew so many artists here a century ago.

At Tate St Ives, the exposed roof of the new gallery is currently being built. Here, you can see the struck beams and formwork in preparation for the concrete pour.

Once built, the roof will become a continuation of the landscape of the Cornish coast. We have introduced a series of public, landscaped spaces, with a gentle set of stairs weaving between the elevated volumes of the light chambers, meeting an existing path which leads to the sea.

This weekend, the entire JFA team travelled to St Ives in Cornwall to see our new gallery for Tate in construction. We visited the windswept site, overlooking beautiful Porthmeor Beach.

We were able to walk around the new gallery, still open to the sky, its 6.5m-high walls constructed using local concrete.

Our house in Trinidad is taking shape beautifully. The windows have just been installed. Next, the concrete floors and stairs will be poured and the Travertine will be arriving for the external cladding.

During building works for the extension to Kettle’s Yard, excavation in the courtyard in front of the house and gallery has revealed two deep Roman wells and a wall. Findings include decorative plasterwork, tiles and two fragmented pots. These fascinating discoveries are significant for the historic picture of the area but shall not effect the progress of the building work. Andrew Nairne, Director, says: “We’ve always known that this area was historically significant and we’re very excited to discover the Roman origins of the site.”