23-11-2007
Woking. Lightbox. Marks Barfield Architects. 2007
A museum and gallery built on a small lot using formal and construction solutions that make the most of the space available: Lightbox is a project by Marks Barfield Architects, famous for building the London Eye, the ferris wheel that has become a new landmark in the English capital.
The town of Woking is in Surrey and Lightbox is its first major cultural centre, for which the town held a design competition in 2002. The small triangular lot is located between Basingstoke canal and the motor linking the area with central Woking.The project's setting determined some of the choices in the design. Barfield chose to place the building as close to the canal and as far away from the five-lane motorway as possible, not only to integrate the museum into the town but also in order to create an icon of sustainable architecture.
This is demonstrated not only by the building's location but by a number of choices aimed at saving energy and drawing on natural energy sources.
