A Modern Museum and Research Building in Historic London

The Darwin Centre Phase One at London’s Natural History Museum won a Businessweek / Architectural Record award for innovative design that helps organizations achieve their business goals.

As the first phase of The Natural History Museum’s most significant development since it opened in 1881, the Darwin Centre offers visitors rare, behind-the-scenes access to the work and people of the museum. The building provides a new home for more than 22 million zoological specimens and laboratories for 100 scientists.

The team explored technical innovation within a design ethos of lasting civic architecture. The new building promotes research and exhibits its results in an atmosphere of dignified utility that has visual clarity, intellectual rigor and technical consistency.

The contemporary detailing recreates the historic tradition of “architecture parlante” – buildings whose external appearance describes what happens inside. The zoomorphic brackets of the solar wall, the changing appearance created by the sun-tracking metal louvers and the caterpillar-like inflated roof refer directly to the activities inside the building. The design team worked with English Heritage to ensure that the new building would complement nearby historical buildings.

The museum experienced increases in site-wide revenue, on-site functions, visiting scientists and website visitors.