The Lightbox

The Lightbox, the first museum and gallery in Woking, is a new kind of community cultural centre. The brief was to design an open and inviting space that would reflect the cultural diversity of the town and live up to Woking’s reputation as the UK’s greenest borough. It originated from the community in 1993 and had to capable of displaying both international exhibitions and local artist’s work alike, as well telling the story of Woking’s history.

Since opening in Sept 2007, it has proved extremely popular with over 65,000 visitors, doubling its predicted annual figures in the first 6 months!

The building concept is of a jewellery box containing all kinds of precious cultural treasures. Overlapping, shimmering, `snakeskin`-like anodised aluminium panels, in five shades of gold and silver, spiral up and around the building. The cladding pattern, inspired by the lateral line found on fish {for balance} and Byzantine gold mosaics, is designed to confound the rectilinear form of the building.

Its site is a triangular sliver of land sandwiched between the Basingstoke canal and a 5 -lane highway diving it from the centre of Woking. One of the key objectives was to address the building to the canal while protecting it from the highway, yet connecting back into the town centre. A canal garden was created by locating the building as far as possible to the wider end of the site, forming a west facing water side garden.

The building is linked to Woking`s energy-saving combined heat and power system. The entire building is naturally ventilated - drawing air in from the canal side of the building - except the galleries. Roof lights provide daylight as well as forming the extract ventilation air path to the loggia and generating energy with PVs.

The Lightbox by Marks Barfield in United Kingdom won the WA Award Cycle 1. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.