Geffrye Museum

Shoreditch, 1998

Exactly because the new wing extends the almshouses the museum has occupied for almost a century, we took many clues for this design from the existing buildings. The new structures are built from London brick and have a traditional timber pitch. We filled the space between the old and the new with a diagrid roof that swirls and hovers between the brick structures as if it were a cloud. Visitors emerge from the linear sequence of room sets in the almshouses to discover a curved trajectory applied to the 20th century settings.

Next: The Wall