Let there be light With £85m refurb, National Gallery makes an entrance

Few parts of London have seen so many style wars waged over their future as the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square.

- Oliver Wainwright

Nelson may be safely ensconced on his column, but another Battle of Trafalgar has been rumbling for decades beneath his feet, seeing architectural grenades hurled to and fro at the western end of the National Gallery.

A 1950s competition produced a bold brutalist plan to extend the gallery, formed of crisscrossing cantilevered planes jutting out into the square, but it was deemed too daring. The 1980s saw a glassy, hi-tech proposal, crowned with futuristic pylons. But it was famously dismissed by the then Prince Charles as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend".

Finally, emerging victorious in the 1990s were the US pioneers of postmodernism: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Their high mannerist mashup combined corinthian pilasters and big tinted windows with witty abandon.

"Palladio and modernism fight it out on the main facade," declared the architects. The Sainsbury Wing was Grade-I listed in 2018, one of the youngest ever buildings to receive such protection.

But that wasn't the end of it. The latest volley in the style wars lands this week, launched by the Cologne-born, New York-based architect Annabelle Selldorf, in the form of a tranquillising bullet of museum world good taste.

Marking the key part of the gallery's £85m programme of capital works for its 200th anniversary, Selldorf's project transforms the Sainsbury wing into the museum's main entrance. It provides an accessible welcome for all - after decades of some visitors climbing the stepped portico and others being sent around the side.