Star of the big screen

Many think of Bradford as the grubby embodiment of the thoroughly Yorkshire sentiment, "Where there's muck there's brass". Yet Bradford in 1983 confounded its ill-informed detractors by becoming home to a resource that stood for everything that was new, modern, even futuristic: the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. By 1997, 10 million visitors had gone through its doors, making it the most popular museum outside London.

For the go-ahead people of Bradford, however, this was far from enough. Aware that their museum was in a sense a makeshift edifice, built around a converted 1960s municipal theatre, they wanted something bigger, better, more flexible and more functional – but at the same time more glamorous. What they decided on, in fact, was a £16m expansion partly funded by the lottery.

Just a few days ago, I was treated to a preview of the revamped museum, which will open to the public later this month. As both a proud Yorkshireman and a devoted movie fan, I was not just impressed, I was dazzled.

Designed by Austin-Smith: Lord, the improved museum certainly possesses in-your-face features that are bound to make an impact on even the most blasé.

The front facade is now a shimmering curved wall of clear glass that rises the full height of the building's five storeys.

This imposing frontage gives the impression of a big building, but, when all its spaces have been explored, it turns out to be even bigger. Behind the glazed front is a gleaming atrium that houses the box office, a bookshop and an information point, along with a bar and restaurant.

The 15 m high facade not only entices visitors in to see the exhibits, but is a showpiece in its own right. Incorporating the most up-to-date projection and display facilities, films shown on the facade screen give visitors a taste of things to come even before they enter the building.

The museum's IMAX auditorium, which was the first of its kind when it was installed in the auditorium of the former theatre in 1983, has been brought up to date with state-of-the-art 3D projectors. I was allowed to go into the projection room and view these mammoth marvels with their huge nozzles. In the auditorium itself, I jumped when they started testing the dauntingly loud sound system.

The reconstruction has given the museum a third auditorium to supplement the IMAX screen and Pictureville cinema, which is one of the best movie house interiors in Britain. The new Cubby Broccoli cinema, endowed by the foundation named after the founding father of James Bond pictures, is an intimate, 120-seat auditorium.

All of these fixtures are things the public will notice – and are supposed to notice.

What they are unlikely to notice, and are not meant to, is the redesign of the whole of the augmented interior. Some 20% extra floor space has been added, giving more room for new attractions and exhibitions.

The new museum has been designed specifically to accommodate fixed displays, to make room for exhibitions that will stay for a while and then be dismantled, and to anticipate the technological advances that will keep the museum at the forefront of the digital age.

I asked: "Which came first, the chicken (the exhibits) or the egg (the exhibition spaces)?" The answer is both: the spaces have been designed to suit the exhibits, and the exhibits are and will be designed to make best use of the spaces.

For example, the huge space allocated to the Wire Worlds section can and will be adjusted to take account of digital developments, foreseen and unforeseen.

The lofty gallery space in the new wing of the museum can also be altered in size and shape to suit successive exhibitions.

For the public, the museum offers a welcoming interior and a clear route around the displays. Visitors are unobtrusively guided and will not get confused. Disabled access is provided to all floors. There are, in addition, study rooms, research facilities, a reading room with 20 000 books and a film archive. The displays themselves range from the fascinating (an extraordinary collection of vintage cameras) to the delightful (the Magic Factory, an Ali Baba's Cave of instructive and interactive games that children, and some adults, have to be prised away from).

Those 10 million visitors who visited the museum's previous incarnation are only a foretaste of the crowds that will flood into it in future. The reconstructed building is a prime example of functional architecture at its most effective.