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Article from issue 4/2004 »Building with Light«

Gallery in Ghent

documentation p. 324 - 326
Architect Taillieu, Jo | Structural Engineer Babel Notebaert, Walter |

To create exhibition spaces for furniture, utensils and art, the client had an old two-storey building refurbished. The structure, which was divided into two sections by a courtyard, had been subject to many alterations over the years. These included the addition of a roof over the yard, which had turned it into an internal space. The design sought to reveal as much of the original structure as possible.
In view of the tight budget, creative and economical solutions were necessary, for which the architect turned to agricultural models inmany cases. The roof over the courtyard was removed, and a link was created between the front and rear sections of the development in the form of a bright-yellow two-metre-diameter polyester tube – an element normally used for fodder silos. Since the walls of the tube are only 1.5cm thick, the plastic is translucent and gleams at night when the adjoining rooms are illuminated. This link affords access to the exhibition space in the rear part of the complex. The windows to this tract had been removed in the past to create openings to the covered yard. Instead of inserting new windows, a double-skin membrane was spanned in front of the wall and fixed with aluminium strips at top and bottom. Air is blown in between the skins. This construction not only forms a thermal separation between inside and outside; the translucent membrane also creates an attractive lighting mood.

Details
1:400 Floor plan
1:5 Section through membrane wall