Stitching Time: Architecture and the making of the museum

Seen this way, architecture isn’t just a backdrop, but an active part of how a museum works, shaping how people move through spaces, what they notice, and how they make sense of what they encounter.

With an increasing responsibility for inclusion, participation and public value, museums today are less about display and preservation and more about creating shared experiences. Purcell’s recent work at St Bartholomew’s Hospital North Wing, the Shoemakers Museum, and Hull Maritime explores how this can be done within historic contexts, transforming existing buildings into places that are more open, accessible and connected to the communities around them.

Since the first purpose designed public museums emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries, the role of the museum building and the relationship between architectural purpose and curatorial intent has continually evolved. The enfilade sequence of top-lit galleries at John Soane’s Dulwich Picture Gallery creates ideal conditions for visitors to view paintings. Focused on the interior experience, the stable, diffused, and architecturally controlled light conditions at Dulwich maximise the legibility and appreciation of the works, while shaping a coherent and contemplative gallery experience.

A very different and almost contemporary model can be seen at Alexandre Lenoir’s 1795 Musée des Monuments Français. Here, with its series of curated historic scenes, Lenoir is engaged in a project to rescue endangered artefacts and reassemble them into a chronological, emotionally resonant narrative of cultural history, pioneering the museum as a space of both historical instruction and experiential engagement.

At both Dulwich and the Musée des Monuments Français, the role of the building extends beyond simply protecting and presenting a collection, it enables a deeper relationship between the visitor and the collection. At Dulwich, this is experiential and personal, whereas with Lenoir it is emotive and socially instructive, framing heritage as a shared cultural resource.

Across Purcell’s recent museum projects, the building is consistently deployed not as a passive container but as an active curatorial instrument. Each project demonstrates how architecture can structure perception, construct narrative, and reframe heritage as a shared civic asset through precise spatial, material and environmental strategies, while responding to contemporary imperatives around accessibility, inclusivity and meaningful public engagement.

At St Bartholomew’s Hospital North Wing, this begins with an act of architectural and curatorial recovery.

A previously inaccessible administrative range is opened as a public cultural space, with the Great Hall and Hogarth Stair forming a central processional sequence. The restoration foregrounds the relationship between architecture and image: Hogarth’s paintings are encountered not as isolated objects but as integral elements within a spatial narrative, framed by restored joinery, plaster ceilings and gilded surfaces.

The sequencing of stair, landing and hall creates a rhythmic progression of compression and release, guiding visitors of differing abilities through carefully calibrated and increasingly legible viewpoints. Environmental conditions are controlled through conservation-led interventions that stabilise light, surfaces and atmosphere, ensuring legibility without intrusive systems. Enhancements to access, interpretation and circulation enable broader and more equitable engagement, supporting a range of learning styles and sensory experiences. The result is an experience shaped through movement, light and interpretation, presenting the North Wing as an inclusive narrative of healthcare, philanthropy and institutional identity.

The Shoemakers Museum develops these ideas through a more explicit synthesis of architecture, narrative and community identity. Here, Purcell’s design stitches together a 16th-century manor house, a 17th-century barn and a new insertion, creating a spatial assemblage that reflects layered histories while re-establishing the site as a civic destination.

The galleries are organised around a central atrium, where exposed glulam structure and a CLT stair provide intuitive orientation and accessible routes through the building. Double-height, column-free gallery spaces allow for flexible and adaptable modes of display, supporting inclusive interpretation and diverse visitor needs.

Materially, the building acts as an interpretive device: salvaged Blue Lias stone anchors it in its geological context, while the folded brick façade incorporates detailing derived from shoemaking—stitching, pinking and broguing—transforming the building itself into an accessible narrative of craft and production. Light is carefully mediated through the atrium and controlled openings, creating a hierarchy from open, welcoming thresholds to more focused gallery spaces. In doing so, the project fosters participation, enabling visitors to engage actively with stories of labour, making and community identity.

At Hull Maritime Museum, these principles are extended to an urban scale. The project is conceived as a networked sequence of sites, reconnecting dock offices, shipyard, vessels and public realm into a distributed and accessible museum experience. Within the Grade II* listed building, interventions focus on reworking circulation and access: an additional floor and a previously underused atrium are opened and repurposed as exhibition and orientation spaces, fundamentally altering how the museum is navigated. New circulation routes, lifts and walkways create layered movement and multiple vantage points, enabling inclusive access to large-scale artefacts and supporting varied modes of engagement. The insertion of a rooflight introduces controlled top light, enhancing spatial clarity and wayfinding. Beyond the building, the reconfiguration of Queen’s Gardens establishes a direct physical and visual connection between museum and waterfront, extending the curatorial narrative into the public realm and removing barriers between collection and city. In this way, the museum becomes not only more legible, but more open, participatory and embedded within everyday urban life.

Collectively, these projects demonstrate how contemporary museum architecture operates simultaneously as environmental framework, narrative device and civic platform.

At St Barts, the emphasis is on revealing and sequencing historic interiors; at the Shoemakers Museum, on embedding layered narratives in structure and material; and at Hull Maritime, on choreographing experience across building and city. In each case, architecture shapes not only how objects are viewed, but how histories are accessed, shared and collectively experienced, aligning the museum with its evolving role as an inclusive, accessible and socially engaged cultural institution.