Black Country Living Museum
by Napier Clarke Architects
Client Black Country Living Museum
Award RIBA West Midlands Award 2024
The new entrance building provides this popular open-air museum with not only a gateway but, also, a visitor centre with café, shop, offices, and welfare facilities. It is designed to improve the welcome experience for up to 5,000 people per day visiting to view and learn about the area’s rich industrial heritage.
Navigating difficult ground conditions peppered with mine shafts and tunnels, the architects produced a design that does not compete with the exhibits, but provides a legible yet flexible entrance point. It greets visitors with a strong but familiar pitched roof form, echoing the museum’s exhibited buildings. Its steel frame is a key principle of the design and relates directly to the site’s industrial heritage.
The protective metal-clad exterior shrouds a meticulously detailed interior, conceived to be easily demountable. Stripped of any superfluous detail, it features bare, ‘self-finished’ materials, providing a practical, working building in harmony with its context.
Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal.
Contractor Balfour Beatty
Structural Engineer Donald McIntyre Design
Quantity Surveyor MDA Consulting
Gross internal area in m² 1,530
