Project manager picked for £150m Museum of London

Project manager Buro Four has been appointed by the Museum of London to deliver its new home at West Smithfield in the City.

The £130m - £150m construction budget will be spent converting the site’s heritage market buildings into a new home for the museum, with more space for visitors and for display of more of the museum’s six million plus collection of objects.

Stanton Williams and Asif Khan won the competition to design the scheme in August, working with conservation architect Julian Harrap and landscape design consultants J&L Gibbons.

The early stage design concept includes a new lifted dome to create a light-filled entrance to the museum, spiral escalators to transport visitors down to the exhibition galleries in a vast excavated underground chamber and a new sunken garden and green spaces.

The museum intends to submit a planning application for the West Smithfield site to the City of London Corporation in 2018 and to deliver the new museum by 2022.

David Spence, director of transformation at the Museum of London, said: “The construction of the new Museum of London is unparalleled in the UK in its complexity. Therefore it is crucial to work with a skilled project management firm capable of meeting the challenge ahead. Through a rigorous procurement process, Buro Four proved that they had the right skills for the job and it is a pleasure to have them on board.”

Iain Roberts, director and chairman of Buro Four said: “Great cities deserve great museum, and London, one of the greatest cities in the world, deserves a truly world class setting in which to tell its own story. We are absolutely delighted to be part of such an iconic project for the London community and cannot wait to get started”.