Chichester Roman Museum “Controversy”

Back in April of 2008, Chichester announced plans to put a museum over the top of an archaeological site of roman ruins that had previously been under a car park. Chichester is one of those British towns were you can’t go six inches down without hitting something Roman. “Chester” and “cester” are corruptions of the Roman word for encampment, after all.

The plans for the new museum seemed to have caused issues over its design. Now, I read these in my RSS reader, so all I got was text. So I saw that the redesigned plans were too minor and the museum could be a “white elephant”, so says the chair of the planning committee. It seemed there was a range of criticisms, some of them practical like roads, some of them subjective like the design of the adjacent housing block expected to pay for it. 

Then I read that the plans were given the go ahead two weeks later (by the same planning committee). I then read, “the design is a huge monolithic monstrosity” and ”we are not going to have a building that future generations are going to be proud of.” I love how several media outlets feel the opinion of a local is as good as an expert, but when I read those quotes I expected a real architectural event I could get into.

I then found these (tiny) pictures. Anti-climatic doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s the most conservative, non-descript design that I first wondered if I was looking at the original car park. Then I wondered if it was a swimming pool.

I suppose this is the opposite end of museum architecture. In one extreme you have a Super Dan Fortress of Solitude, in the other a building of absolute uniformity that no identity can be possible. Looking at the designer’s website, Keith Williams Architects (ooooh), they have a very conservative style. Well, conservative by today’s standards. Their buildings seem to whisper and function rather than flaunt. I imagine that Chichester museum will be far more clever than the images portray. But monolithic monstrosity? It doesn’t look like it could make such a bold statement.