Hepworth Gallery: Achieving Visual Concrete (Wakefield)

David Chipperfield’s £35m Hepworth Gallery is the focal point of the regeneration of Wakefield’s River Calder waterfront. The gallery consists of 10 double-height trapezoidal concrete forms, each with independent mono-pitched roofs. Hepworth Gallery is the largest purpose built gallery to be built in the UK for 50 years and it represents the first use of pigmented self-compacting concrete in the UK. Designed to meet BREEAM ‘very good’ the building takes advantage of the riverside setting using river water at basement level to help cool the building and high thermal mass to mitigate high thermal and cooling loads.