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Victoria and Albert Museum Spiral

Architecture of LondonDaniel Libeskind designsProposed buildings and structures in LondonUse British English from August 2015Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum Spiral (or V&A Spiral, or The Spiral) was a proposed extension to the 19th-century London building which houses the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world's largest museum of decorative arts. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind and the designer, artist, and writer, Cecil Balmond. The museum chose the design over seven others in competition in 1996 but, after much controversy and failing three times to attract the necessary funding, the project was abandoned in 2004.     When the design was chosen in 1996, Libeskind was relatively unknown, but in 1999 he won international acclaim for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and his master plan for the World Trade Center site in New York has made him a household name there. 

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Victoria and Albert Museum Spiral (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Victoria and Albert Museum Spiral
Cromwell Road, London Brompton (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea)

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N 51.4967 ° E -0.1733 °
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Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)

Cromwell Road
SW7 2RL London, Brompton (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea)
England, United Kingdom
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call+44(0)2079422000

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vam.ac.uk

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Destruction of the Country House exhibition
Destruction of the Country House exhibition

The Destruction of the Country House 1875–1975 was an exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 1974, commissioned by V&A Director Roy Strong and curated by John Harris, Marcus Binney and Peter Thornton (then working, respectively, at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Country Life magazine and the V&A Department of Furniture and Woodwork). The exhibition included a "Hall of Destruction", decorated with falling columns and illustrations of some of the thousand country houses demolished since 1875, brought down by falling estate incomes, rising costs, death duties, and damage caused by government requisitioning during the Second World War. Described as a "landmark" exhibition, the graphic illustration of the scale of destruction of Britain's built heritage changed public opinion and encouraged moves to protect the country houses that remained. The success of the exhibition inspired the formation of the campaigning group, Save Britain's Heritage, in 1975 – a year that was designated as European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe - but the changed public mood could not prevent the sale of the extraordinary collection of art and furniture at Mentmore Towers in 1975, and of the empty building itself in 1977, to pay taxes following the death of Harry Primrose, 6th Earl of Rosebery in 1973. The exhibition was followed in 1977 and 1979 by two further exhibitions at the V&A on British architectural heritage: Change and Decay: The Future of our Churches (curated by Strong, Binney and Peter Burman), and then The Garden: A Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (organised by Harris).