This design is for a new gallery at the heart of New Bond Street for the established Fine Art Dealers, Richard Green Galleries. The current buildings on the site had become inadequate for the task of housing a modern exhibition space, and George Saumarez Smith was commissioned to prepare proposals for a replacement building with gallery spaces and offices that would be used exclusively for Richard Green’s growing collection of twentieth century art.

The new building is designed to relate to the existing streetscape and its historic character. The design consists of a single-storey shop front, with two principal floors and a plainer attic storey above. Compositionally, the proposal was designed to be read as either a 3 or 5 bay building, retaining the memory of the former buildings on the site, and remaining in harmony with the wider street scene. The building will be constructed in Portland stone with a bronze framed shopfront.

Central to the design is the inclusion of three sculptural panels by the well-known British artist Alexander Stoddart. The façade of the new building forms an architectural framework around the three bas-reliefs, placed between the first and second floor windows. Carved in Portland stone, these pieces will illustrate scenes from the Odyssey. The subject has been chosen as an allegory for the development of Modern art from 1900 to the present day, in which ordinary things are taken out of their context and seen in new and challenging ways.

The building combines a classic approach to design with an appropriate modernity, allowing the proposal to fit in with the architecture of the street whilst visually proclaiming its own unique and distinctive identity. The scheme will be an asset to the architectural and townscape quality of New Bond Street and aims to indicate the way forward in modern gallery design for the future. The proposal has now received planning permission with widespread local support, and work is due to start on site early in 2009.