Established in 1973, Rick Mather Architects has built a reputation for delivering high quality, innovative, award-winning projects encompassing architecture, masterplanning and urban design.
Spanning both new build and renovation with a special interest in the cultural and education sectors, the studio’s work is known for its innovative expertise in the intelligent re-interpretation of existing, often listed structures and in sustainable low energy building.
Current projects include the Ashmoleam Egyptian Galleries, a £14 million Skills Centre in Barking, an extension to the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, an Integrated Front Office for LB Newham, a new library for Christ’s College Cambridge, a masterplan for the Royal Docks for the University of East London and an extensive masterplan for North Harlow. Recently completed projects include the $160 million extension of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond VA, the £61 million expansion and renovation of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, a £24 million new Art and Design Academy for Liverpool John Moores University, the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, the first phase of the Southbank Centre masterplan in London, two new boarding houses and an Art School for Stowe School and a new music auditorium for Corpus Christi College Oxford.
Talking to Rick Mather, it is easy to see why this practice is so successful. His natural enthusiasm lights up the conversation and brings each project to life in a striking manner. Referring to the Ashmoleam Museum in Oxford, he says, “This was the most popular building that we have ever done. We had to provide an extension to the UK’s oldest museum and, in so doing, we actually doubled the exhibition space and this has allowed one of the great collections to be better displayed and makes everything easier to view for the public and also much easier for them to find their way around. What we did has enabled every visitor to overcome that feeling of too much to see and not enough time and space in which to enjoy it. In addition, if they reach that point where they feel they are suffering from culture fatigue, they can escape to the roof top café. There is a set of stairs that pulls people right up to the roof and which, in turn draws light down another staircase into the museum.”
Its collections are among the most varied and extensive in the country. It possesses the most important collection of pre-Dynastic Egyptian material outside Cairo, the only great collection of Minoan antiquities outside Heraklion, the largest and most important collection of Raphael drawings in the world, and the greatest Anglo Saxon collections outside the British Museum.
This project was completed in November 2009 at a cost of £61 million and won numerous awards including a Civic Trust Award, the Travel + Leisure Design – Best Museum Awards, Building Magazine Project of the Year, an Oxford Preservation Trust Award and a 2010 RIBA Award and shortlisting for the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize
As a follow on from this success, Rick Mather is currently working on a £5 million redevelopment of the four existing Egyptian galleries, along with the transformation of the Ruskin Gallery, which was formally occupied by the Ashmolean Shop, into a fifth gallery to house the Predynastic holdings. New doorways will link the galleries together, presenting the collections under the broad themes of Nubia and Amarna, Dynastic Egypt, and Egyptian Death and the Afterlife. The project has also involved the relocation of the Shop into a newly converted space next to the café on the lower ground floor.
Across the water in the USA, one of the practice’s recent successes has been the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, Virginia. This posed a completely different set of problems to those of the Ashmoleam Museum, which is totally land and building locked. This one is set in a parking lot, which, Rick says “We converted into a sculpture garden and moved the cars into a separate parking lot and, in so doing swept the sculpture garden right up and over the parking lot, creating a hill with a water feature around it that acts as a security barrier but also incorporates a floating deck café. We also created a high atrium between the old and new buildings which is claimed to be the biggest public space in Richmond!”
Rick Mather Architects were selected from an international field of competitors in 2001 to masterplan and design this major expansion and renovation of this highly reputed, 65 year old encyclopaedic museum and its 5.5 hectare (13.5 acre) campus. This marked the office’s first major commission in the United States. The project was delivered in collaboration with SMBW Architects, a Richmond-based firm.
Rick concludes: “We try to work on interesting buildings. During the last 20 years we have worked on many museums, including the National Maritime Museum and the Wallace Collection off Oxford Street but the Ashmoleam Museum was by far our greatest success. Over the years, our work has been recognised by many Awarding bodies, including the Civic Trust and the RIBA, for buildings such as the Liverpool John Moores University Art & Design Academy and Corpus Christi College Oxford, where we built an auditorium into the surrounding Oxford City walls, where, in so doing we opened up two previously hidden recesses with arrow slits. We created a roof garden looking out over the Cathedral and its gardens, bringing the ramparts around to totally integrate the new work. Another interesting project for us was the Towner Museum in Eastbourne for which we won a Civic Trust and RIBA Award in 2010. Here we built a major new addition to the cultural quarter of the town adjacent to the Grade II* listed Congress Theatre and right on the edge of the Devonshire Park international tennis courts. This beautiful and resourceful building houses some stunning concrete-shell gallery spaces and achieves a remarkable feat of connecting well both visually and physically with the classic-modernist conference centre next door.”
For further information please telephone 0207 284 1727 or visit www.rickmather.com
