The Challenge
The Box is one of the largest new multi-disciplinary arts and museum spaces, housing Plymouth’s most important heritage collections on one site. A grade two listed building creating heritage attractions has been further underlined by delivering a landmark that celebrates Plymouth’s role shaping world history.
The existing museum became outdated and needed re-energising. Having tabled a scoping brief headed ‘love our past – step into our future’. Research at the time revealed local people’s views: “Its somewhere to go in Plymouth that is interactive, lots of learning – and fun” (MHS – Hero’s) and It really shoes Plymouth off (city bus employ) Design challenge: To transform Plymouths Grade II listed museum, library and adjacent church into a cutting-edge facility boasting 7 galleries and 6 exhibition areas, in a space three times the original site’s size, so required intelligent engineering. Also to include a) 55m² lobbied frozen store to been incorporated into the basement below the main space, b) to house 24,000 boxes and, c) a new piazza which to link the buildings.
