Project Profile: Medieval and Renaissance Galleries, V&A Museum, Kensington

Project key points

• Demolition of part of the structure as the rest of the gallery remained opened.

• Temporary works installation to tie-in the new slabs into the existing masonry walls.

• Groundworks, underpinning to the existing structure and new services trenches throughout existing building

• Suspended in-situ white reinforced concrete slabs and white exhibition plinths.

• Batching plant and prefabrication yards set up to enable off-site production of the architectural white staircase, the white concrete wall cladding panels and bespoke white concrete curved seating.

• Eight flight in-situ white concrete floors and stair.

Staircase

• The white concrete hub staircase stands free from the existing walls, creating an independent element to the existing structure.

• Bespoke formwork was created to achieve the tolerances and high quality finish required with Halfen channels cast into the sides of the stairs to hold the balustrade and stainless steel plates.  The stairs were trowel finished on top and the landings and half landings were power floated to achieve a high quality finish.

• The stairs and landings are 160mm thick fair-faced concrete with no finish applied resulting in a slender appearance, limiting its visual impact

• Two slender columns were constructed using fibreglass formwork with the pour being completed in four stages to a total height of 13m.