Everything’s gone green. Expansion plans for the Whitworth Art Gallery.

The planned £12m expansion of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery will bring the outside in

The Whitworth Art Gallery has been located in the leafy Whitworth Park since 1889. But you’d be forgiven for not realising. The Gallery perches on the park’s edge, its frontage facing away from it and toward the University and the city centre, so much so that most visitors probably don’t take much notice of it.

All that is set to change with plans for a £12m extension that will re-orient the Whitworth towards the park, and create a slightly surreal ‘art garden’ for an al fresco gallery experience. The Whitworth will gain a new cafe in the tree canopy, a study centre, art workshop and education facilities. And extensive renovations to the gallery space will help open the entire building up to the park around it.

Design firm MUMA was selected through a RIBA architctechtural competitition that drew 130 entries. MUMA (McInnes, Usher, McKnight Architects) has a solid rack record when it comes to cultural building: the practice recently completed a large-scale project at The V&A, including the new Medeival & Renaissance Galleries and a new restaurant and cafe. It also oversaw the extension of Newlyn Art Gallery and the conversion of a Penzance telephone exhange into an art gallery now called ‘The Exchange’.

‘We found the client’s vision for the project, as well as the gallery’s setting in the park, to be very inspiring,’ said MUMA’s Gillian McInnes. ‘Their vision to engage the gallery more with the park, has informed our competition thoughts and our subsequent proposal.’

MUMA may have won the competition but there’s still a way to go until the builders don hard hats and start constructing the new gallery-in-a-park. ‘Since winning, MUMA has been working with the Whitworth and the University of Manchester, together with a team of specialist consultants, to evaluate the feasibilty of implementing the competition ideas,’ said McInnes. Plans are now being refined ahead of a final bid being submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund later this year.

The Whitworth pleasure gardens were intended to give the residents of Manchester’s industrial inner city a green space to enjoy some fresh air, a place to stroll and amuse themselves in their precious leisure time. And today’s Mancunians need this kind of place just as much as their nineteenth-century counterparts. We’ll keep our fingers and toes crossed for that Lottery bid. Now, art and a picnic, anyone?

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