Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum plans to extend its transformation and is seeking an architect and lead designer for its future Wonderlab gallery.
Planned to open in late 2027, a new Wonderland gallery will be an interactive science space to inspire children to think, experiment and play like inventors.
The Science and Industry Museum is looking for an architect and lead designer through an open competition, with first stage tenders due by 24 March.
New galleries at Manchester museum
Additionally, feasibility work will begin this year for a new free Technicians gallery for young people, set to be an interactive world of technical careers.
This gallery would open towards the end of this decade, and would be housed in the historic arches of the viaduct in the lower courtyard of the museum.
Following extensive external repairs, feasibility work will also begin this year on a new gallery and rail experience for an adjacent 1830 station.
The first stage of restoration work has already taken place on this Grade I-listed station; the oldest surviving passenger station in the world.
The new visitor attraction in the 1830 station will open ahead of 2030.
Finally, feasibility work will soon commence on landscaping and improving access in an area for a proposed science playground.
The museum has announced plans for new permanent galleries and improvements to its site as its first phase of repair and renovation nears completion, including the reopening of the Power Hall this summer.
“Ahead of the Power Hall re-opening this summer and the completion of a mammoth amount of repair work to our wonderful historic buildings, we can now look forward to future compelling galleries that will help us tell the stories of the world’s first industrial city and ideas that change the world,” said the Science and Industry Museum’s director Sally MacDonald.
50% of museum’s site repaired
By the end of 2025, 50 percent of the Science and Industry Museum’s site will have been significantly repaired and renewed over the last five years.
This includes the museum’s Station Agent’s House, which has been transformed into a holiday property as part of the multimillion-pound restoration project.
In addition, historic roofs across the museum have been repaired.
“It’s our mission to open the potential of the whole of this globally significant industrial heritage site – to bring all of it back into use and to celebrate it through a journey that allows visitors to explore and understand how the buildings and structures that the museum cares for connect to the collections and stories they contain,” said MacDonald.
Images courtesy of the Science Museum Group
