Carmody Groarke

New Special Exhibitions Gallery

NEW SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS GALLERY

Carmody Groarke

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher

ARCHITECTS
Carmody Groarke

M&E SUBCONTRACTOR
Murray Building Services and Performance Electrical Limited

CLIENT
Science Museum Group

FIRE ENGINEER
Design Fire Consultants

MAIN CONTRACTOR
HH Smith & Sons

STRUCTURAL ENGINEER
Price & Myers

FLOOR SUB CONTRACTOR
Bell Asphalt

DOOR SUB CONTRACTOR
Robust UK

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Gardiner & Theobald

SERVICE ENGINEER
Skelly & Couch

COSTS CONSULTANT
Appleyard & Trew

APPROVED INSPECTOR
Butler and Young

HERITAGE CONSULTANT
Heritage Architecture

PLANNING CONSULTANTS
Deloitte Real Estate

CLADDING CONTRACTOR
Streamline Fibreglass

PHOTOGRAPHS
Gilbert McCarragher

AREA
1200 m²

YEAR
2021

LOCATION
Manchester, United Kingdom

CATEGORY
Exhibition Center, Gallery

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher

The gallery is located on the lower ground floor of the New Warehouse, a Grade II listed structure, dating back to the 1880s. In the coming years, the museum aims to create stronger site-wide orientation and access between the existing historic buildings and spaces and its network of Victorian railway viaducts.

The Special Exhibitions Gallery project creates a new visitor route, which links the Lower Yard with the busiest levels of the museum above. It also opens-up public access as a gallery space to this part of the museum’s globally significant site for the first time.

The new entrance from the museum’s Lower Yard rehabilitates the vaulted under- croft of the historic viaduct, also known as the “Pineapple Line” (over which railway tracks run into the New Warehouse), now transforming this area into a bright and welcoming space, which clearly orientates visitors and provides an uplifting arrival.

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher
New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher

Full-height, fibre-glass panelled walls transform the visitor welcome from outside to inside, alleviating the visual weight of the heavy Victorian structures overhead, which were designed to support the weight of goods wagons above, and concealing some of the ongoing maintenance works required for care the historic building fabric in perpetuity.

Each new fibre-glass panel has been hand-cast and tinted with a terracotta-hue to complement the surrounding weathered Victorian brickwork.

The panels are subtly back-lit, revealing the maker’s marks in their surface and to gently illuminate the spatial and decorative qualities of the historic cast-iron and brick jack-arch structures that form the railway infrastructure above.

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher
New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher

The generous external ramped entrance below the railway viaduct creates step free access for all visitors and assists with collections management; allowing the museum to display larger collection items, with dedicated object preparation and handling facilities also being provided.

The Lower Yard and the area below the ‘Pineapple Line’ viaduct will increasingly play a key role in the site-wide masterplan, with new connections and entrances between the Science and Industry Museum, The Factory and the developing St John’s and Castlefield neighbourhoods, as this part of the city is transformed.

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher
New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher

Inside, the foyer contains visitor welcome functions and a large open-plan events space, which connects directly to the new Special Exhibitions Gallery.
This new gallery exploits the size and character of the vast warehouse lower-ground floor with its composite cast-iron and brick structure and 5m-high vaulted ceilings, which follow the profile of historic railway lines and platforms above.

The historic fabric throughout the gallery has been revealed and restored, to allow visitors to experience the grandeur and scale of the original warehouse space, whilst enjoying new exhibition experiences.

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher
New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher

The gallery has been carefully designed to support the display of the museum’s collections, whilst also reducing the museum’s energy use.

Passive environmental design has been used wherever possible to reduce life-cycle costing, save carbon and to reduce the visual impact on the exhibition environment. New walls are bolstered with hygroscopic mass to reduce need for dehumidification and low energy exhibition lighting has been used throughout.

The Special Exhibitions Gallery is the first project to be completed in the Science and Industry Museum’s multi-million-pound masterplan, which will conserve and further open up its globally significant buildings and bring to life the story of the site and past, present, and future ideas that change the world.

New Special Exhibitions Gallery
© Gilbert McCarragher


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New Special Exhibitions Gallery
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New Special Exhibitions Gallery
Floor plan
New Special Exhibitions Gallery
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New Special Exhibitions Gallery
Location plan

Carmody Groarke
T +44 20 78362333
Carmody Groarke
1 Lindsey St, Barbican, London EC1A 9HP, United Kingdom