St Albans Museum
St Albans Council
The museum's building was outdated, not easily accessible and it struggled to attract visitors and national touring exhibitions
We worked with St Albans Council, with imagination, logic and rigour to move the museum into the centre of the city by showing how the old law courts could be refurbished into a new facility for both the Museum and an Art Gallery, with flexible spaces for hire and hosting civic events.
“I worked with colleagues at Mowat & Company on a complex collaborative Museum and Gallery project. The project was complex in a number of dimensions - we were aiming to bring different Gallery and Museum resources, previously managed by different entities. together in one listed building that required both serious physical intervention and careful conservation management, whilst at the same time providing a contemporary answer to the challenge of providing an acceptable solution to providing a museum and gallery for upwards of 300,000 visitors per year on a city-centre site. ”
“As a result, the museum received a 19 x increase in visitors from 17,000 visits per year to 193,000 in the first 7 months.”
Listed buildings can be adapted and sustained to make great spaces for exhibitions and learning, here are other projects that apply this ethos: