National Museum of Scotland

We are delighted to be part of a shortlisted team in the British Museum’s revamp competition. The Museum has named the five design teams shortlisted to overhaul more than a third of its gallery spaces and rework behind-the-scenes areas. The high-profile competition attracted more than 60 entrants from six continents.
The scheme will be the museum’s biggest building project since the 1820s. The 100,000m² museum has around 3,500 different rooms and features more than eight million items in its permanent collection.
Now, the shortlisted designs are on display in the Museum’s Round Reading Room, titled Rethinking the British Museum. The winner will be announced in early 2025.
We are part of a team consisting of Eric Parry Architects and Jamie Fobert Architects with Buro Happold, David Bonnett Associates, Mima, Price & Myers, Purcell, Space Syntax and Studio ZNA.
The two-stage contest, hosted by Colander Associates, focuses on the western area of the Grade I-listed museum, which currently hosts collections of Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman artefacts. Key aims of the project include the ‘introduction of contemporary architecture and innovative gallery displays, alongside sensitivity towards the need to respect and restore the highly significant and celebrated listed buildings on the site.'
Our team has proposed:
Breaking open floor plates and peeling back walls allows a newfound freedom of movement. Basement vaults reach up to the top galleries, creating a new hierarchy of scale.
New light and volume honour the artefacts. The buried Robert Smirke architecture will finally have the space to breathe again.
Narratives traverse cultures and times, encouraging non-linear interpretation of objects, giving visitors agency to tell their own stories, to engage and reflect.
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The redevelopment of the Western Range offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rebuild and renovate some of our most important gallery spaces. As a reflection of our ambition, we launched an international architectural competition – asking for the best of the best to step forward – and they did, from Britain and across the world. In early 2025 we will select the winner, and together start work on the designs.
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