British Museum
London, United Kingdom
The British Museum is dressed with our natural stones
L’histoire entre le British Museum et Polycor a commencé en 1939 avec la création de la gallerie Duveen. Offerte au British Museum par le marchand d’art Joseph Duveen et imaginée par l’architecte américain John Russell Pope, la galerie a accueilli les marbres d’Elgin qui étaient à l’origine des sculptures du Parthénon. Terminée en 1939, Polycor a fourni de la Pouillenay stone for the interior lining of the gallery. The Duveen Gallery was going to be inaugurated when World War II started, it was bombed in 1940 and only finally opened in 1962.
Imaginée par Foster + Partners, la grande cour centrale du British Museum est devenue après sa rénovation la plus grande place couverte d’Europe. En son centre se situe la salle de lecture circulaire qui abritait l’ancienne British Library, où sont venus étudier, notamment, Karl Marx, Lénine, Oscar Wilde ou Gandhi. Polycor a fourni la Anstrude stone to dress the walls. The floors are also in French limestone, in Balzac stone from Dordogne.
"The courtyard at the centre of the British Museum was one of London’s long-lost spaces. Originally a garden, soon after its completion in the mid-nineteenth century it was filled by the round Reading Room and its associated bookstacks. Without this space the Museum was like a city without a park. This project is about its reinvention."
Gallery
Photo credits
Eric Pouhier (CC BY-SA 3.0)
ROCAMAT
