V&A Photography Centre, Kensington & Chelsea

2025 RIBA London Award  

Culture
V&A Photography Centre, Kensington & Chelsea 
Gibson Thornley with Purcell for Victoria & Albert Museum
Contract value: Confidential 
GIA: 565m² 

The Photography Centre at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is the most extensive suite of gallery spaces in the UK dedicated to a permanent photography collection. Housed in the museum’s 19th-century buildings, it occupies a sequence of seven of its original galleries, two of which had already been refurbished.

Gibson Thornley and Purcell together won the architectural competition for this second stage of the adaptation in 2019. The design process evolved through a creative engagement with a group of young people, to increase relevance to future generations of V&A visitors.

The project started with the restoration of the Grade I-listed galleries, returning the five-room enfilade to its original grand elegance. After decades of underuse as offices, stores – or simply being boarded up – the process of opening up revealed the scale of the spaces and provided clues as to the quality and condition of the original features. A programme of repair and reinstatement to plasterwork, mouldings and cornicing, along with sensitive insertion of modern services such as heating, cooling and air-quality monitoring, has returned the rooms to use as elegant galleries.

The project is so accomplished as a programme of conservation and repair that it might have been indiscernible from the V&A’s myriad other gallery spaces, were it not for Room 98. This gallery – a bold and highly crafted insertion to provide a home for the Royal Photographic Society library – proved the major focus of the jury’s visit.

The room provides storage for thousands of photos, cameras and books held in the archive which were intended to be displayed, while not being made available for public browsing. The solution was floor-to-cornice shelving along three perimeter walls, arranged over two levels. 

The lower-level shelves are secured with lockable glass doors, with the upper level accessed by a gallery walkway via a new stair and book lift. These are located behind secure entrances recessed within the fourth side of shelving. 

Due to limitations on floor loading, the entire shelving system and cantilevered walkway are all wall-mounted. The system was prefabricated and brought to site in sections for installation and, should requirements change in the future, could be dismantled and removed. 

The co-ordination of these structural components and shelving is flawless, with a beautiful balustrade design that combines a semicircular detail with the arched gallery openings to create the illusion of two large camera lenses. With low lighting appropriate to the storage of light-sensitive materials and a few items of loose furniture, the space is welcoming and of human scale, somewhat contrasting with the vast galleries on either side.

At the far end of the sequence, a smaller gallery has been repurposed to create a camera obscura, a fun demonstration of the natural phenomenon that forms the basis of photography. It is a low-tech interactive moment, and a counterpoint to the highly crafted library space, brought together with the skilled conservation of the three adjoining galleries.

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RIBA UK Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and VELUX