Ashmolean Museum by MICA Architects

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was presented at the AT Awards live finals on 20 September 2023 to a jury comprising Rab Bennetts, Juliette Morgan, Neil Thomas, Peter Bishop, Nana Biamah-Ofosu, and Chair Isabel Allen. Read about how the project has stood the test of time.

Completed
Completed Masterplan (1999) The New Ashmolean (2009) Ashmolean Egypt Galleries (2011) Randolph Gallery (2013)

MICA Architects’ comprehensive redevelopment of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum includes a new entrance from St Giles, a six-storey building with 4,000-square-metres of display space, an education centre, conservation studios, loading bay, and the careful removal of a series of poor-quality Victorian structures located behind the Cockerell building.

The axial plan establishes primary and secondary routes through the building, unifying the entire museum and its collection in a coherent manner. Daylight is filtered vertically through the building to the lower-ground floor via interconnecting, double-height galleries. A new rooftop café terrace provides panoramic views over the city’s ‘dreaming spires’.

Credit: Andy Matthews

Having always suffered a deficit of space, the museum’s brief focused on flexibility and future-proofing. A flexible, large-span, repeating structural frame facilitates adaption through the addition and removal of floors to increase display space and/or reconfigure the galleries. Services provision in the flanking walls allows for the addition of partitions and flexibility for both temporary and permanent galleries. A low-level displacement ventilation strategy enables the galleries to be further modified with a variety of internal plinths, screens and central displays.

New air handling equipment, water services and electrical capacity has been oversized to give short-term flexibility to moderate supplies in the new building, while also providing for future internal projects and medium/long-term additions to the Ashmolean estate. Low-energy measures to control temperature and humidity have also been introduced in the existing galleries.

Significantly increased visitor numbers attest to the overall success of the award-winning scheme, with greater accessibility, improved display environments, the expansion of education and outreach programs, as well as the ability to host internationally significant temporary exhibitions all playing a role in the museum’s redevelopment.