Museums and Gallleries

Museums open culture to everyone. They offer people an encounter with both objects and ideas, and add to what they know. Our work for museums is shaped by two convictions: that good architecture can be a catalyst for a rich civic life, and that collections should be open to everyone and cared for over the long term.

We design museums and galleries as a sequence of encounters. Some are with the building itself: sunlight on a floor as people gather at an entrance, a stair that turns to reveal a view of the city, or the framing of a gallery door. In exhibition spaces our architecture becomes more restrained, making room for reflection so that the encounter is with the collection itself. We design this sequence to be felt as much as understood.

Our appointments range from feasibility studies and estate masterplans through to full design and delivery. We work alongside capital projects, collections and facilities teams, curators and conservators, and with Historic England where buildings are listed. Our projects are often planned around museums that must remain open throughout.

At the British Museum, we are renewing twelve galleries across the North Wing in a phased programme of works. Replacing the roofs and rooflights decarbonises the building, and new services bring temperature, humidity and CO₂ control to international museum standards while the interiors are upgraded.

For the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, our Centenary project moved the car park to the edge of the site and reorganised the museum around a new central green. A 1970s hangar became the entrance and main galleries. The projects were supported by HM Treasury and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and in 2022 we won the national competition to design the museum's Vision 2030 programme, which creates a national archive, learning spaces and visitor facilities arranged around two Grade II listed hangars.

We have prepared designs for a new entrance and exhibition galleries at the Science Museum and a new entrance for the V&A within Aston Webb's Grade I listed entrance hall. For the University of Brighton, we converted a 1960s office block into a public photography and film gallery above production facilities for students and local arts organisations.

Since 2008 we have won ten international design competitions, several of them for museums.