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Dorset Museum – Interiors

Client: Dorset Museum

We have risen to the challenge of Dorset Museum’s aspirational interiors brief, creating a coherent, contemporary yet sympathetic scheme across the original Victorian museum buildings and the new four-storey gallery at its core, which more than doubles the previous display space. 

 

The £16.4m transformation brings the Museum up to the most stringent contemporary international standards, adding generous archive and educational space, as well as introducing a vital, revenue-generating asset in the event suite created by clustering a new café and kitchen beside the original Victorian Hall. Our café scheme celebrates existing ornate, high ceilings, stained glass elements and bay windows. Walls are painted ‘Lulworth Blue’ and are hung with black and white archive prints from the Museum’s photographic collection. Black, white and grey decorative elements in the cafe resonate with the adjacent Hall’s restored herringbone tiled floor.

The Library, which is now open for public use, returns to its original home on the first floor, with more workspace, new IT equipment and a relaxed seating area. Together with the vastly expanded and improved gallery spaces, plus dedicated education and archive areas, we have improved legibility and accessibility, transforming a much loved local asset. On re-opening in Spring 2021, the new Dorset Museum’s impact on Dorchester’s historic quarter and its cultural and tourism offer has brought economic, educational and social benefits to the whole county. 

Our role:

  • Master space planning

  • Funding bid support - HLF 2

  • Interior design

  • Graphic Design with Surface 3

  • Lighting design with DHA Designs 

  • Overseeing installation

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