V&A Museum Extension

London, England

Description

The competition for the new extension to the Victoria and Albert Museum was won by Studio Libeskind in 1996. The design for The Spiral, in collaboration with Ove Arup’s Cecil Balmond, pushed the boundaries of engineering and architectural theory. The design is an upward spiral of intersecting planes, creating a jagged vortex inserted between three Grade I listed buildings. The building is derived from an extruded section of a fractal pattern: a geometric pattern relating to the Golden Section. The extruded line was then wrapped upon itself to create the unique shape of the non-axial spiral. The system of continuous, interlocking wall elements required no supporting beams, thus creating unencumbered, free flowing interior spaces that mirror the movement in the façade.