The escalator in the Ondaatje Wing of London’s National Portrait Gallery is a monument of my childhood. It rises up to the Tudor Gallery from a central hall that is Corbusian in its stark whiteness, and compels visitors to begin at the top of the building, as at the Guggenheim in New York.
When the Portrait Gallery was built in the 19th century, it had an East Wing, a sliver of space that looked, on any plan, like it should have belonged to the adjacent National Gallery. Indeed, the Portrait Gallery’s architect, Ewan Christian, designed the wing in the style of its neighbour, as though he envisioned the National one day owning the space. Eventually, it did. When the Ondaatje Wing was developed, the National gained the East Wing and, in return, allowed the Portrait to be extended in such a way that would block light to one of its buildings. I know all this because my father was project architect at the practice behind it, Dixon Jones.
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