RESIDENCE COURT

So last week I was busying myself with fleshing out Soane’s N.W. extension which is different from his earlier work at the Bank in some interesting ways.  The banking halls (ultimately 5 of them) were all top lit and built using domes and vaults.  The N.E. extension (orange in my diagrams) was something of a jigsaw puzzle, or perhaps a Rubiks Cube, where the various elements had to be shuffled around in space and time in order to make the best use of the available space while keeping the bank operations going.

The land acquired to the North West was not at all rectangular, but there was more room to maneuver this time, and much less need to reconfigure or relocate existing functions.  So he was able to come up with a scheme that was essentially a series of rectangular rooms arranged around two rectangular courtyards.  As a result he was able to use conventional side lighting and pitched roofs for most of this work. 

I spent a small amount of time developing the facades of the garden…