The National Maritime Museum

The National Maritime Museum

The new Maritime Museum, completed in 2002, is set between the town centre and the large warehouses of the docks. Here it provides a focus for local identity and attracts the visitors on which the Cornish economy now depends.

Falmouth is one of the largest deep-water natural harbours in the world; it has always had a fishing fleet and was once a convenient stopping off place for the great ships on the Atlantic. The town grew along the western side of the Fal estuary, curving round into docks at the southern end where a headland projects to narrow the mouth.

The new Maritime Museum, completed in 2002, is set between the town centre and the large warehouses of the docks. Here it provides a focus for local identity and attracts the visitors on which the Cornish economy now depends. The new building combines two separate museums; the National Maritime Museum, whose small boat collection had been locked up in storage and the local Cornwall Maritime Museum which needed new accommodation. The brief called for an area of around 5,000 m2, some of which had to have at least 12 metres of headroom, together with smaller display and service areas.

More case studies

The Great Barn at Harmondsworth is the largest timber-framed medieval building in the country and one of the few surviving:
a magnificent and remarkably preserved Grade I-listed building which is nearly a thousand years old.

A new workshop/shelter for project work at the Architectural Association’s Hooke Park campus has been built and designed by the students themselves. The workshop is the latest in the collection of innovative timber buildings at Hooke Park.