Great North Museum is brought bang up to date
May 23 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
TOP architect Sir Terry Farrell was back in town yesterday on the eve of the public opening of the Great North Museum.
After three years of work and £26m spent, the listed 19th Hancock Museum in Newcastle has been refashioned into a 21st Century visitor attraction and a showcase for 3,500 exhibits.
It’s a big deal. But for Sir Terry, whose prestigious London practice were the architects for the museum, it is one more substantial piece in a long-term vision to transform his native city.
He sees the museum as the latest big step in the masterplan he delivered to bring neighbouring Newcastle University closer to the city and its people.
This led to the concept of a Cultural Quarter gateway to the north of the city, embracing Newcastle and Northumbria universities and the Civic Centre.
Although based in London for the last 43 years, Sir Terry grew up in a prefab house in the Grange council estate in Gosforth, Newcastle.
After his education at St Cuthbert’s Grammar School in the city he studied architecture at King’s College, now Newcastle University but then part of Durham University. His frequent returns to his roots include the commission in 1989 to draw up the masterplan for the regeneration of the rundown East Quayside in Newcastle.
"It triggered all kinds of other things. It had a ripple effect," he said yesterday.
In 1996 Farrells took on the job of designing Newcastle’s International Centre for Life and, in Times Square, the city’s first public square for over a century.
