The Museum as a City

Visitors enter the Red House, descend into the entrails of the city, come upon the railway line that passes through the foundations and then discover the General Market from the perspective of a staircase that leads into the space beneath the dome. The Museum’s collections, presented like treasure in a crown of showcases around the space, surge up in front of visitors before they make their way across a sky-bridge above West Smithfield Avenue to the spaces of the Fish Market with their cafes and shops.

Inside the Museum, large showcases present the collection as an accumulation of stories and experiences, a treasure trove of objects flowing from the city’s earliest history to its present. These showcases are made of the same materials of patinated metal, dark wood and gold, and anti-reflective glass as the new entrance enveloping the Red House building. Visitors are thus invited on an enchanted promenade in which elements familiar to their imaginations – the buildings, the interior spaces of the Markets, the collections of the Museum – appear before them in an unexpected, surreal, dramatic way.

It is only slowly that the collections are discovered in more intimate fashion on this promenade through 8,000 m2 of exhibition space. Like a city, the Museum invites visitors to take different routes. The routes for first-time and repeat visitors are shown within. Other routes through the Museum are of course possible, including from the Farringdon Street entrance for pedestrians coming from the new Farringdon Station or from the Museum Thoroughfare for repeat visitors.

Urban Functioning and Landscaping

The new entrance building contains a giant urban mirror oriented at 45º and reflecting the façade of the Red House onto the Museum Thoroughfare. In reverse fashion, this urban mirror brings the reflection of the Museum Thoroughfare into the entrance space of the new Museum. The new entrance thus functions like an optical prism connecting the spaces of the city together.

By activating West Smithfield Avenue and Poultry Market Avenue as pedestrian spaces, the design turns the new Museum entrance into the heart of an animated, bustling new urban quarter. Limiting the circulation on West Smithfield Avenue around the General Market and the Fish Market will allow new pedestrian areas to be formed, and the creation of the new Museum Thoroughfare on Poultry Market Avenue will provide lively pedestrian space that is open both by day and by night.

The circulation to the east and west on West Smithfield Avenue and Smithfield Street will provide the drop-off points necessary for the optimal functioning of the new Museum. Importantly, the entrance on the corner of the General Market and Farringdon Street will be open and welcoming to pedestrians coming from Farringdon Station and the new transport hubs in the area. This historic entrance to the General Market will serve the Museum’s large interior café, attracting pedestrians, commuters leaving work, or casual passers-by and becoming a key meeting place and facilitating rapid access to all the activities of the Museum.

The beautiful historic façade on Farringdon Street will be animated by large glass showcases providing pedestrians and passing traffic evolving and spectacularly conceived representations of the great periods and major figures in the history of London, as well as contemporary exhibitions and events.

The roofs of the Red House and Engine House and the façade on Westfield Street are planted with tall shrubs that seem to rise up as if on an ancient archaeological site. West Smithfield itself is treated like a pedestrian area, with groups of trees at intervals giving the street a peaceful and refreshing character.

An Exemplary Restoration at Ease with the Past, the Present and the Future

By conserving all the existing heritage within the project area, the new Museum of London will take a highly symbolic step in line with the urban context and expectations of Londoners. The design restores, enhances, and presents the architectural heritage of the existing buildings in work that is uncompromising, exemplary in character, and accommodating of present and future functions.

It avoids stark architectural gestures, privileging complementarity over contrast. It opens up a dialogue between the Museum’s collections and programmes of all kinds, with spaces designed to cater for evolving displays and needs, a multiplicity of events and further growth.