Ditchling Museum of Art & Craft by Adam Richards Architects.

Redesigning the Ditchling Museum of Arts and Crafts as well as the permanent exhibition itself, London based Adam Richards Architects have produced a stunning monument to the Movement by championing Ruskin ideals, whilst simultaneously challenging the nature of contemporary museum architecture.

Originally transforming the old village school, two elderly sisters established the museum in 1985. Since then, the museum has showcased an increasingly infamous collection of treasures fashioned by some of the most prominent Arts and Crafts protagonists – such as provocative sculptor Eric Gill and London underground typeface creator Edward Johnson – all who lived in Ditchling during the Movement. Yet after twenty years of paying homage, the heritage-listed museum began to fall into disrepair and some serious TLC beckoned.

Enter our hero for today, Adam Richards Architects. Marrying the new and the old by a love of the craft, Adam and his team restored the old museum building and an adjacent cart lodge, and then connected them with a series of pavilion galleries. Evolving beyond a stylised pastiche and into a deep cultural architecture, the museum honestly engages with the treasures it was designed to exhibit. Nothing showcases this more than the considered true-to-material detailing strewn throughout. From the newly exposed and freshly sanded down oak trusses in the old cart lodge, to the scrupulously detailed cross-laminate timber beams, with their beautiful finger joint detailing. And as for those pavilion interventions connecting it all. Amazing! The striking and super elegant zinc-clad gallery sits next to another newly built exhibition building, delicately finished in hand-made ceramic roof tiles. Could it get any craftier?

Moving beyond the formulaic tendencies of contemporary museums to either overshadow their exhibitions as cultural icons or completely disengage themselves from the treasures they hold, by adopting a ‘white box’ approach, the Ditchling museum is one of those magical projects that’s been crafted from a heightened awareness of contextual drivers. Having recently won the adaptive-reuse award 2015, this project surely sets a precedent for culturally significant buildings and public spaces to come. Total love for the Arts and Crafts today!