The Horniman was originally designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in 1901 (he also did the Whitechapel Gallery and the Bishopsgate Institute) and the A&M work was part of a long overdue delapidations and extensions programme that called for an exhibition space, education facilities, a shop and cafe. It also called for clearing away unsatisfactory extensions and attempting to make a connection between the interiors and the surrounding parkland. The result is a delight, both in terms of what A&M have done and what the Horniman now is.
Townsend’s building is now a small complex of inter-linked pavilions in a park. From the street it reads as four: two belonging to the Townsend design, the gable end of the A&M extension, and a 1994 Centre for Understanding the Environment, from Architype (actually quite a nice ‘green’ pavilion in itself, complete with the obligatory grass on roof). To the rear is another (a glasshouse). Inside, the Museum is a mix of old and new and the collection is, on the whole, a superb and idiosyncratic mix of ethnographic pieces. The parts handled by A&M are excellent (especially the new music room) and one only wishes the funding could have extended to a revamp of all spaces. (Perhaps that it didn’t remains a part of the pleasure of the place.) This is possibly A&M at their best: picking up contextural themes from the existing parts of the Horniman — particularly the barrel vaulting — and reinventing them. The detailing and proportioning is, as always, superb (vaguely Scarpa inspired) and the scale is (again as always) well handled. It’s a lively mix, often thronged with children and the place offers the especial pleasures of expert but non- monumental architecture somewhere out there in suburban London. If there is a sour note it’s that frequent English disparity between cultural and design intent, and management actions (manifest here, for example, in the stink of frying chips that fills the otherwise fine cafe).