The Museum of London is leaving the constrained multi-level site it currently occupies in the Powell & Moya building at London Wall.

About this Event

The Museum of London is leaving the constrained multi-level site it currently occupies in the Powell & Moya building at London Wall to go to new premises. These are to be created at Smithfields within the General Market of 1882, the former Fish Market of 1888 and the 1968 Poultry Market. Beneath the Smithfield streets which interconnect this array of buildings lie the gargantuan underground railway chambers which will display some of the Museum's 7 million objects.

Each of the buildings within the campus has extraordinary qualities whether of architectural design, engineering construction or industrial archaeological interest. The intermittent rumble of the running railway is a constant presence for every visitor. The Poultry Market has one of the largest ‘handkerchief’ shell concrete domes in Europe. The General Market has late 19th century rivetted iron Phoenix Columns from Pennsylvania whilst the Red House contained one of London’s first refrigerated storehouses for meat and fish.

Paul Williams and Julian Harrap will discuss the design team’s approach to the rich heritage of the existing market buildings and the need to balance that approach with an understanding of the practicalities of creating a great museum experience. They will talk about the design opportunities that have arisen and prompted change, post competition once the design team gained access to study the buildings in more detail, and most importantly had extensive dialogue with the Museum team. Their primary architectural aim has remained constant – to harness the sheer physicality and rawness that already exists on the site, to repair and restore where appropriate and, through a process of decoding and translation either remove existing redundant elements or add contemporary interventions in order to create a clear organisational logic for the Museum and provide possibilities for future transformation.

City Makers Series

The Temple Bar Trust’s City Makers series explores aspects of city planning architecture and placemaking by key architects working in the City and historians engaged with its varied and dramatic stresses and strains. Our timeframe embraces a number of centuries, recent decades and includes teams working in significant ways to forge the future public design quality of the City in the 2020s.

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