A small public gallery in the Bras Basah arts district, slotted between two conserved shophouses on a narrow plot. The project balances a careful conservation of the old party walls and shopfront with a calm new insertion that gives the institution flexible, light-controlled rooms for a changing programme.
The architecture works as a quiet host. A top-lit central volume pulls soft northern daylight deep into the plan, while the gallery walls themselves are detailed as a kit that curators can reconfigure for each show. We kept the conserved street face intact and let the new work be felt only once you are inside, so the building reads as part of its street rather than an object dropped into it.
Material restraint does the heavy lifting: a single warm concrete, oak floors, blackened steel and a great deal of considered nothing. The result is a generous small building — easy to run, kind to the art and a credit to the conservation area it joins.
