The British Museum - Western Range
The British Museum - Western Range
As part of an international, two-stage competition, we provided engineering advice for a £50m scheme at the British Museum, billed as one of the ‘most significant cultural redevelopment projects ever undertaken’.
The Western Range holds a third of the museum’s overall gallery space, as well as significant backof-house areas, totalling 15,650 square meters. It includes the Egyptian sculpture gallery, the Parthenon Sculptures and the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs. Its buildings range in age from the original 1850s buildings designed by Robert Smirke, to later additions such as Gallery 10 and 22. All of the buildings were in need of upgrade to meet contemporary building performance standards, and many contain highly significant heritage building fabric.
Concieved as part of a decade-long renovation masterplan, our engineering advice (as part of a David Chipperfield Architects-led team) for the Western Range responded to the Museum’s sensitive historic buildings, ambitious decarbonisation plans, and the ongoing process of reimagining the display and care of collections.
We proposed two large public halls that would open up the museum to allow greater public participation. The proposals were submitted as part of a day-long charrette with the museum in December, who we have worked with as engineers for over 30 years.
The designs were then placed on public display in the museum’s Reading Room, which had recently reopened following a decade-long closure, allowing visitors inside for the first time in over a decade. For this refurbishment, we worked as engineers alongside Wright & Wright Architects.
The Western Range competition was part of the wider Masterplan project, which will restore and renovate the British Museum’s iconic Camden site, extend to new locations, and ensure its extraordinary collection is housed in buildings and galleries fit for the 21st century.
Our work for the competition built upon our long and successful relationship with the British Museum, working on a wide variety of projects as framework consultants. This has ranged from small, specific projects advising on displaying exhibits to gallery refurbishments and wider-ranging strategic advice.
Client: The British Museum
Collaborators: AEA Consulting, Adamson Associates Architects, Arup, Atelier Bruckner, Atelier Ten, David Chipperfield Architects, Lobe Lloyd, Julian Harrap Architects LLP, Plan A Consultants Ltd, Reusefully Ltd, Neal Shasore