The British Museum
Part of the British Museum will be completely redesigned, with the museum administration choosing architect Lina Ghotmeh’s designs this weekend.
The building that houses the British Museum dates back to the early to mid-nineteenth century. It was designed by Sir Robert Smirke in the popular Greek revival style, a testament to the architectural trends of its time. Originally intended to accommodate around 100,000 visitors per year, the museum’s expansion and increased prominence during the height of the British empire led to a surge in visitors, putting great strain on the structure. The museum has long needed renovation to keep up with the crowds it attracts. The first stage in this redevelopment is redesigning the Western Range, which consists of all the galleries west of the Great Court, the large atrium visitors enter shortly after walking through the museum’s front doors. These western galleries feature many of the museum’s ancient artifacts, including Egyptian pieces like the Rosetta Stone, Mesopotamian antiquities like the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs, and the highly controversial Greek sculptures taken from the Acropolis in the early nineteenth century. The museum administration announced in May 2024 that it would accept submissions for new designs for these galleries.
Lebanese-born French architect Lina Ghotmeh, whose designs were chosen, plans on bringing what she calls an “archaeological approach”. And when you look at some of the images of what these galleries will eventually look like, you can sort of understand what she means by that. They look bright and spacious, with an extensive use of stone that brings a simultaneously modern yet ancient feel. They seem almost inspired by the palaces and temples of antiquity from which many of these artifacts originate. Museum director Nicholas Cullinan said the jury selected her designs because of “their beauty, sensitivity and ingenuity”. Her firm’s previous projects include the Hermès Leather Workshop and the Estonian National Museum. Lina has also received many accolades, including the 2023 Great Arab Minds Award, the 2020 Schelling Architecture Award, and the 2016 Prix Déjean awarded by the Académie d’Architecture. She has also been nominated for the AFEX Grand Prix and the Mies van der Rohe Award.
The British Museum administration has stated that the construction will work to preserve the parts of the building designed by Smirke. They have also assured the public that this project will be executed over several phases, meaning that not all galleries will be closed simultaneously, allowing visitors to visit most of the museum at any given time. These redesigns are part of a larger “masterplan” that the British Museum’s administration unveiled to modernize one of the world’s largest cultural institutions. The plan includes creating a museum energy center to decrease reliance on fossil fuels; in theory, it will save 1,873 tons of carbon dioxide and make the building far more sustainable (that is, if they’ve abandoned their environmentally unfriendly NFT digitization project). This is rather ironic since British Petroleum plans on donating £50 million towards the redevelopment project.