Sheffield Millennium Galleries is a pair of inspirational, landmark buildings by Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects who won the commission in competition in 1995. The Millennium Galleries is an art gallery in the City of Sheffield, England, finished in 2001, then the Sheffield Winter Garden in 2002. They were conceived as the most important parts of the Heart of the City Project and located in the city center close to the city library, Sheffield Hallam University, and the city’s theater district, also covered links in a new pedestrian route between the station and city center, helping restore part of the urban fabric that had been unravelled by post-war road schemes and redevelopment.

The Sheffield Millennium Galleries was won through a competition based on the first of a series of masterplans for this massive central area of Sheffield. Consequently, part of the context with which the galleries were designed to work was missing at the time of completion, but the architects were determined to create a fragment of a dense urban fabric rather than a building as an object. The success of such a drastic transformation of this part of the city center was immediate, with the galleries becoming a popular destination for local people.

The T-shaped complex works as an interior route, connecting three major squares through an arcade and a covered public space. It provides a wealth of public facilities within light-filled, airy spaces, its highly engineered architecture relying on clarity and openness. The Sheffield Millennium Galleries provide 1,900 m² of temporary exhibition space, divided into four sections: the Special Exhibition Gallery hosts touring exhibitions from galleries like the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, flexibly planned with movable full height screens that run parallel with the vaults.

Then the Craft and Design Gallery shows the work of past and present craftsmen and designers, the Metalwork Gallery is designed to showcase Sheffield’s fine metalwork and silverware industries, and the Ruskin Gallery hosts the collection of the Guild of St George, which was established in Sheffield by John Ruskin in the 19^th century. The gallery is connected to another city landmark, the Sheffield Winter Gardens. The last of the other three exhibition galleries is separated from the adjacent Winter Garden by a glazed wall. This has glass panels by Keiko Mukaide symbolising water and clouds, creating an appropriate and stunning juxtaposition of art and nature.

The Sheffield Millennium Galleries tries to low profile, presenting an elegant and quietly understated front to Arundel Gate, and is set into the slope of the hill with the galleries on the upper level over a service undercroft. The glazed front is set within a slender modular frame of white concrete and reveals the ground floor cafe to the bustle of Arundel Gate. Long silver louvres screen the Long Gallery above. Inside, a light and spacious entrance hall has escalators to the first floor ‘avenue’ which serves both as an indoor street to the Winter Garden and gives access to the five galleries on its left side.

The roof comprises a series of lateral barrel vaults, only partly visible externally, of fine white pre-cast concrete with columns and beams of the same material, giving a cool calmness to the interior. This smooth quality is enhanced by diffused natural light, created by the imaginative use of glass blocks in the avenue’s roof vaults and N wall and cleverly reflected light from clerestories.

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