An alternative design has been prepared for the proposed extension to J.J.Burnett's
King Edward VII building at the British museum.

The proposed extension, which was recently considered for planning consent is so incongrous adjoining Burnett's building that an alternative has been put forward and is illustrated here. The modernist scheme put forward consists of four 'pavilions', one of which adjoins the King Edward VII building.

The alternative design refers to the pavilion of pavilions, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (of which many fragments are displayed within the museum). The stepped, pyramidal rood is surmounted by a winged Nike representative of the victory over mundane modernism. At the base of the pyramid two sleeping lions symbolize the great store of architectural knowledge and history contained within the museum and which has been denied to the architects of the twentieth and twenty first centuries by the taboos of modernism. Above the great central window a sculptural frieze depicts robed maidens returning the gifts of civilization back to the altar of Apollo. At the base of the pavilion two Muses are introduced to reinstate the original meaning of the Museum,
a Temple of the Muses.

Craig Hamilton, Radnorshire, December 2009