NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, HINTZ HALL OPENING
JULY 2017
Niall attended the Natural History Museum VIP opening of Hintze Hall and the introduction of Hope – the new blue whale skeleton suspended from Alfred Waterhouse’s wrought iron roof structure.
This new exhibit marks a new chapter in the Museum’s engagement with the public on scientific issues. Meanwhile Dippy the Dinosaur has embarked on a UK-wide tour which will culminate in the skeleton being cast in bronze before taking up its new home in the NMLA-designed Museum grounds.
The first phase of this project involves the restoration and introduction of accessibility to the Museum’s famous main entrance and is due to complete in November 2017.
NAZRIN SHAH BUILDING – STEELWORK
JULY 2015
Just over two years since our first tentative steps towards imagining what sort of space a new auditorium for Worcester College might possibly be like, we find ourselves enclosed within a spidery sketch, looking up to the trees through a skeletal enclosure of steel. We watched in excitement as our drawings were scribed across the site, first in neon spray paint and little red sticks, later excavated into deep ravines. We pick our way across the lines that had become so familiar on paper and are now concrete obstacles in a muddy field. The reality of this transition only became real as we stood looking across at the steel columns in this picture. They map out the positions of the stone fins that radiate around the curved facade of the new auditorium, with the sloping beams above us silhouetted against the bright July sky marking the future locations of the sculpted folds to the soffit.