Venturi Scott-Brown’s National Gallery Sainsbury Wing extension (1991) was born into a precarious no-man’s land between the warring camps of neo-Modernists and traditionalists who had been tussling over the direction of Britain’s cities for much of the prior decade. The site of the extension had come to be one of the most symbolic battlefields in British architecture since a campaign to halt its redevelopment with a Hi-Tech scheme by Ahrends Burton Koralek had led to that project’s refusal at planning in 1984.
This was precipitated by Prince Charles spectacularly wading into the debate with a speech he gave at the 150th anniversary of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Scheduled to simply introduce and award the RIBA Royal Gold Medal that year to Charles Correa, he instead launched a broadside on the state of British architecture, with the fate of the Sainsbury extension positioned as the symbolic apogee of the profession’s dire condition, beginning his attack by proclaiming that the ABK scheme was "like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend."
