This river-facing room will be Links of London Charms as a space for receptions and artists' dinners, with an oak parquet floor designed as a more delicate version of the lower level terrazzo paving. The upper gallery around the rotunda - previously off limits - will become the members' area, accessed from a second, smaller spiral stair. "It's already quite a clubby space," says Caruso, describing how this grand cortile will be a serene haven with views down on to the hustle and bustle of the entrance below. But perhaps the most important, yet - if successful - least recognisable, Links of London Bookworm Charm will be in the galleries themselves. Beginning in the south-east quadrant, Caruso St John is attempting to fix this problematic hotchpotch of spaces. "At the moment, all the rooms have different relationships to the skirting and the entablature," says Caruso, almost offended by this chaos. "In a sense, we are correcting the architecture." But this correction is not only aesthetic. Working with Max Fordham, the architect is rethinking the gallery's environmental strategy entirely. "The Victorians had a really great passive strategy," he says, "so we are Links of London Charm Bracelet and reusing all of the original underfloor voids for ventilation." The new galleries will have temperature and humidity controls, but they will be looser than the international standard - which Tate is actively lobbying to lower. "The standards are completely abstract figures," Caruso tells me, "based on the arbitrary conditions of a salt mine." They were measured and propagated by pioneering conservator Garry Thomson when the national collections were stored in the Winsford salt mines - in whose sprawling underground vaults a Links of London Classic Smiley Minx Charm proportion of the National Archives are still held. But their conditions have since been adopted in the unbending terms of dogmatic enviro-gospel. Not content with reforming the culture of temperature and humidity, the architects have also set about challenging the tyranny of lighting. "In English speaking countries there is an obsession with using spotlights to punch-up the oils," bemoans Caruso.
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