FE McWilliam Gallery

In 2024 Nick Hill Architects was commissioned by Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council to design a new permanent exhibition of the work of the inﬂuential Irish sculptor Frederick Edward McWilliam RA who was born in Banbridge in 1909. McWilliam lived much of his life in London and was a contemporary of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. He achieved great acclaim in his lifetime with a long and productive career and an impressively varied body of work, from early Surrealism to biomorphic abstraction.

Exhibition layout isometric view

The exhibition aims to draw together the many diverse strands of McWilliam’s work using the gallery’s own collection as well as some long-term loans from individuals and other institutions. It is part of a major expansion and refurbishment currently in progress at the public gallery and studio in Armagh founded in McWilliam’s name, and is due to open to the public in 2026.

McWilliam with Gold bean and turquoise blue 1968

The exhibition includes large singular works such as Man at ease 1962

View of proposed main gallery room

Plinths of thick felt on concrete blocks create a low-rise landscape for the display of McWilliam’s sculptures, borrowing from Barbara Hepworth’s idea for an exhibition of her own work at the Tate Gallery in 1968. The gallery is subdivided into smaller rooms by freestanding partitions constructed from modular softwood frames, partially visible through panels of locally produced Irish linen.

McWilliam's celebrated Women of Belfast series completed 1972–74

FE McWilliam Gallery

Project dates

2024–

Use

Cultural

Type

Exhibition design

Status

On site

Gross internal area

TBC

Client

Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council

McWilliam lived much of his life in London and was a contemporary of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. He achieved great acclaim in his lifetime with a long and productive career and an impressively varied body of work, from early Surrealism to biomorphic abstraction.

While the exhibition is permanent, the design nevertheless aims to minimise waste by employing materials and modular construction techniques that allow re-conﬁguration and re-use in the future should it need to be altered and once it comes to the end of its life. The exhibition also re-uses a number of existing vitrines owned by the gallery to create new ﬁxed partitions for display of smaller or more delicate works. Plinths of thick felt on concrete blocks create a low-rise landscape for the display of McWilliam’s sculptures, borrowing from Barbara Hepworth’s idea for an exhibition of her own work at the Tate Gallery in 1968. The gallery is subdivided into smaller rooms by freestanding partitions constructed from modular softwood frames, partially visible through panels of locally produced Irish linen.

Selected projects

House for Two Artists

Notting Hill Garden House

Blackheath Garden Studio

Sevenoaks Visitors’ Centre

About

Nick Hill Architects is an RIBA chartered architectural practice and design studio based in London founded in 2017.

Our practice proceeds from an idea of architecture that is richly associative, engaged with history and memory, as much as it is with the complexities of modern construction, to create thoughtful projects that are rooted in culture, time and place.

Through a series of early built projects, the practice has established a particular sensibility for the characterful use of materials; how they are combined and the care with which they are detailed – whether objects, room interiors, individual buildings or the public spaces in between.

Our designs are empathetic, led by considering how people experience objects, buildings or places. Charles Eames said the role of a designer is like that of a thoughtful host who always anticipates the needs of their guests. We hold this to be true not just for the practical everyday, but for the poetic, the delightful, or what Louis Kahn called the ‘unmeasurable’.

We are strongly collaborative by instinct and believe the more attentive we are to other voices in the design and construction process – from client and end-user to skilled maker or site labourer – the better the outcome. From its start, the practice has valued working in collaboration with other architects and designers and continues to learn from its work with other practices to this day.

At a time of climate crisis and rapid demographic change, we ﬁnd ourselves designing for a future that is increasingly uncertain. In response we are committed to ﬁnding ways of both making and repairing that are resilient, adaptable, and with an economy of means as a central tenet in all projects, no matter the size or budget.

People

Nick has twenty five years’ experience working in architectural practices in the UK and in Hong Kong.

For more than ten years he was an Associate Director at David Chipperfield’s office in London, leading a series of high profile projects including two acclaimed new public galleries, the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire and Turner Contemporary in Margate, as well as the rebuild and refurbishment of Hotel Café Royal on Regent Street, and the realisation of a masterplan for the Royal Academy of Arts campus on Piccadilly.

From 2017 he worked as a consultant to Witherford Watson Mann Architects, drawing on his experience working with public galleries and historic buildings, he led their major refurbishment of The Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House until its completion in 2021. The project was shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize 2023.

Nick has been an invited critic and guest lecturer at architecture schools across the UK and in 2013 and 2014 was a guest lecturer at the Graduate School of Design in Harvard. He has served on competition juries and in 2013 was chair of the RIBA Awards jury for the East England region. He is currently an examiner for Part 3 professional studies at the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Team past and present