Reasons for objecting

Significance of Setting is Ignored

• The Holburne Museum is a Grade I listed building, standing in a Grade II listed landscape.  It is no place to make modern architectural statements.  A new development must, under the council’s own guidelines, be made to fit in with the buildings which surround it.

• The extension will be hidden from Great Pulteney Street, by The Holburne’s main building.  However, it is visible from everywhere else, including Sydney Gardens.  If you stand where the extension is proposed, EVERY building you can see, and every building that will see it, is made of Bath stone.

• There is nothing about the extension which says "I am in Bath".  It is totally out-of-place, and designed without consideration of context and position.

• The Georgian Group’s published view is that an “Holistic approach is needed in Bath”.  This approach is atomistic.  It severs the connection between Sydney Gardens and the Holburne (originally the Sydney Hotel for the Sydney pleasure gardens), and destroys the original landscape design, which Blomfield was careful to maintain.

• An extension must be subservient to the building it extends.  This extension is too big to be subservient.

• In the council's Management Plan for the World Heritage Site, Sydney Gardens is the only landscape on the list of twelve key elements recognising its importance for Bath, along with the Roman Baths. 

Precedence

• Granting consent for these proposals would make it even more difficult, impossible in fact, to prevent other unsuitable works by other developers.

Environment

• The building is going to be clad in ceramic tiles.  Ceramic tiles require prolonged firing.  They need to  be transported across the country.  Bath stone is a local material, which requires neither environmentally expensive firing, nor expensive fuel miles.

• Light pollution.  In the dark days of Winter, this glass box will be a blaze of light.  That coupled with the bare trees, will make this extension the most prominent feature from Bathwick Street, Sydney Place, Darlington Street, Sydney Road, and most importantly, Sydney Gardens itself.  The Visual Impact study of Eric Parry's practice has disingenuously chosen midday, high-Summer daylight to show the visual impact. 

Robustness and Aging

• The ceramic fins will not age well.  Look at the sample on the Holburne's lawn.  Fallen branches, severe hail and errant boys with stones may well cause non-structural chips in the fins.  Non-structural damage will be left unrepaired for months, even years.  Eventually, the building will look as "good" as the bus station looks today.

Please make your objections NOW!!!! 
Before it is too late.