'This is an international institution, a great Regency building and a public face of London. It deserves something better'

One of the most complex practical challenges facing major museums today is the management of entrances. It’s not only that the demands of security, access, information and circulation for millions of visitors are difficult to satisfy, but that they keep growing.

One institution presently confronting this issue is the British Museum and the character of its imposing entrance façade makes this unusually complicated. It was famously designed by Robert Smirke, the youngest of a triumvirate of architects — with John Soane and John Nash — who succeeded to the portfolio of James Wyatt, Surveyor General of the King’s Works, in 1813.

At this time, with additions such as the Townley Collection (1805), the Elgin Marbles (1816) and the Royal Library (1823), the British Museum was bursting at the seams. In 1823–24, therefore, the Museum Trustees began to discuss a replacement building. What Nash or Soane might have made of this commission we can never know, but we still live with Smirke’s response: a monumental Greek Revival design.

The new British Museum was laid out around two courts. One was enclosed on all four sides as a central garden and the other — which stood open on one side — formed the entrance or South Court. Nothing in Regency London compared to the sheer scale of this entrance composition and even the modern visitor cannot fail to be impressed by the South Court temple frontage with its ranks of columns.

On a site constrained by enclosing terraces of houses, however, Smirke’s use of space quickly looked prodigal. By 1857, his garden court had been infilled with the celebrated Reading Room designed by his brother, Sydney Smirke. Since 2000, this space has been partially revived with great success as the Great Court, which helps provide the necessary facilities and orientation for the millions of visitors who come to the museum each year. Now, however, more space is being claimed for their reception both in the South Court and to the rear of the building.

For some years now, there has been a temporary and unsightly visitor pavilion in both places, together with barriers for queuing. No one will lament their disappearance. The British Museum wants to create new pavilions in more permanent materials, but again on a temporary basis. Everyone acknowledges the need and, with a promised lifespan of 10 years, the proposals are seemingly being waved through the system.

Athena, however, thinks that intended changes to the South Court should be subject to more critical scrutiny. Here, both the proposed pavilion and the associated landscaping seem at odds with Smirke’s bold vision. Added to which, Athena is by nature suspicious of temporary structures; they have a tendency to cast permanent shadows. Indeed, that’s exactly what the existing pavilions seem to have done.

This is an international institution, a great Regency building and a public face of London. It deserves something better.