Lynch Architects renovation andextension of Westminster Coroners Court reintroduces death in the city while paying particular attention to the needs of the bereavedRachel Elliott of Lynch Architects is shortlisted for the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice 2024. Find out more about the W Awards hereWestern culture does not seemto be growing any less squeamish about death. Not for us the towers of silence, or dakhma, of Zoroastrianism, where the dead are left in soaring stone structures for vultures to consume. Passing on in Britain today is perhaps even more taboo than it was for the Victorians, with their jetblack mourning jewellery and widows weeds.With the silhouette of a little Queen Anne house and the colouring and magpielike architectural expression of late Victorian civic values, Westminster Coroners Court was built in 1893 to the designs of municipal architect and surveyor, GRW Wheeler. Themain function of the building, which lies not far from the UKs Houses of Commons and Lords, is a firstfloor courtroom with acoved ceiling and skylight hidden from view by the domestic front of a hipped roof. In the 1990s, an anonymous mortuary was added to the rear, while to the side an innocentlooking taxi rank doubles as overspill space in the event of terror incidents like the 2018 Westminster Bridge attack or tragedies such as the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.The buildings original purpose to investigate the circumstances of unexplained deaths remains unchanged. In recent decades, Westminster Coroners Court hasbeen used by four London boroughs to process some of the around 200,000 deaths reported annually to coroners across England and Wales. Around 40 per cent ofthese require inquests a procedure that involves bereaved people, witnesses, police, lawyers and sometimes jurors (the salacious nature of some cases attracts paparazzi like flies to jam). What have shifted since 1893, along with perceptions of thestate, are attitudes to the needs of thebereaved, something architect Patrick Lynch has written about in relation to hisown experience of a coroners court following thedeath of his father in a 1992 accident.The job of extending and renovating the Grade IIlisted building was won by Lynch Architects in 2016. What was needed was an additional courtroom, an improved entrance sequence, dedicated waiting spaces, more meeting rooms and modern office space. Project architect Rachel Elliott has been with the job since the beginning, attending competition interviews with Lynch shortly before maternity leave and returning to seethe building through design development tolast summers practical completion (by which time her child was well advanced at primary school).Lynch Architects urbanminded response to an ostensibly practical brief was to offset the Victorian aedicule with the monumental (and far more ancient) counterpoint of a barrelvaulted tomb or stone sarcophagus a move that unequivocally introduces the spectre of death into the teeming life of thecity. From Horseferry Road today, theundeniably tombstonelike face of thepalenew volume ghosts the red brick and Portland stone banding of the old structure in two cuts of Jura limestone, aseam formed millions of years ago.A dimly lit, timberlined space offers a cavelike embrace to the bereavedAccessed from the original front door andbreaking through the existing west wall, thenew wing comprises a tall, barrelvaulted courtroom with a zincclad roof above offices and a waiting area a dimly lit, timberlined space offering a cavelike embrace to the bereaved. Here, the 19thcentury memorial symbolism of a truncated stone column, speaking of life cut short, is borrowed to provide a prop or leaning postfor people unmoored by grief and circumstance. Aleitmotif of arches emanating from Lynchand Elliotts first readings of thesite,including the main elevations projecting apse of window seat, isextended through new and remodelled interiors to signal key spaces and routes. The architects wanted people to be aware of transitioning from old to new; this is achieved at ground level by the marker of a line of exposed CLT columns running through the new openplan office space. Upstairs, openings through theold fabric to the new corridor link are arched and colonnaded, facing off against the limestoneclad wall of the courtroom in atall channel. Passing through to the court, the eye might catch a line from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Wordsworths odeto London, chiselled in cursive script high up on the wall like a frieze. The lofty character of the inner chamber, which can besubdivided to accommodate different scales and styles of hearing, echoes the calm, toplit dignity of the original court, including its cloak of timber panelling. Outside, the whole is flanked by a pair ofnew secluded gardens, offering space for finding composure alongside flowing water and greenery. (To provide mourning space for the Grenfell bereaved, the eastern garden was accelerated as a separate contract in 2018.) The shadow gap of glazed link that connects old and new was set deeper during design development at the suggestion of Westminsters planners and Historic England. It was a good call, and one of very few comments. Now you can see the corners of both buildings clearly, says Elliott.Soon after the commission became public, artist Brian Clarke contacted the architects with the offer of customdesigned stained glass. Like Lynch, Clarke had experienced the inside of coroner courts, not least as executor for artist Francis Bacon, and had strong views on how user experience might be improved. The stained glass is a way of elevating a secular building, of adding a dimension, comments Elliott. Clarkes panels, evocative of flora that might be found in cemeteries or left by graves, are employed to inject poetry and privacy at key junctures: the ends of the glazed link, the family waiting room, and as a glowing, westfacing triptych in the courtroom. Incorporating a gift into a contractual situation was actually quite tricky, observes Elliott. For the art to be fundamental to the building, the points where the architecture and stained glass meet were important in terms of detailing.In contrast to protracted groundworks involving sheetpiling of the entire site, the buildings CLT structure from Eurban went up in five days during the summer of 2023, with an accuracy and speed Elliott describes as incredibly satisfying. By March 2024, thenew build was watertight and the internal openings could be punched through. Changing attitudes and legislation after the Grenfell tragedy meant that fire engineering was the projects biggest challenge, according to Elliott. Although one cost consultant did suggest that the stone cladding be omitted from the rear of the extension because only the dead in the adjacent mortuary would notice.Elliott studied at Glasgows Mackintosh School of Architecture in the era of Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan, where, shesays, the social purpose of architecture was deeply instilled. Her postqualification experience at van Heyningen & Haward Architects fuelled afurther line of interest in working with historic fabric, leading toaccreditation as anRIBA Conservation Architect as well as aBuilding History masters at Cambridge. AtWestminster Coroners Court, Elliotts work contributed to embedding the spirit of an architectural concept deep into the design development and execution of a newbuild and restoration hybrid, ensuring that the quality of spatial and emotional experience befits the weight and substance of the buildings ongoing public duty. Over time, moving stories of personal encounters with the new building and its stainedglass illuminated spaces willno doubt emerge as part of Londons collective consciousness. Interms of the social mores of death in the city, I would suggest that postoccupancy evaluation might take another century or so.