Assignment three - research

Researching the Mary Rose

I've visited the Mary Rose Museum with friends before now and was very struck by its design. It won the Project of the Year at the Building Awards 2014 which made me think that it might be worth considering for this assignment.

Wilkinson Eyre Architects were commissioned in 2005 to design a museum to permanently house the hull of the ship, which was raised from the seabed of the Solent near Portsmouth in 1982.

 

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Designing a museum for the Mary Rose and its artefacts was a challenge of many layers. The view was that the architectural language had to be appropriate to the ship and to its unusual context among HMS Victory and the listed admiralty buildings of Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. The hull, supported in a dry dock ( itself a Grade 1 listed structure ), required highly specialist environmental conditions to preserve it. 

The architects came up with a design placing  the remaining timbers of the ship centre stage in a ship hall, with a virtual hull running alongside representing the missing section. This virtual hull would house  the retrieved objects in their correct placing in context galleries, corresponding to the original deck levels and leading to further gallery space at the end of the dry dock. 

These context galleries are darkened and filled with the noise of creaking timbers and rushing wind and sea to evoke the claustrophobic feeling of being below deck.

Interestingly, I've learnt more about the concept from researching the museum than from the visits that I've made previously which has made me thoughtful about how best to approach capturing the buildings important features.

I can't say that I'm really won over by the exterior design but it is dramatic and as such lends itself to a very dramatic retelling of the high drama story that is the Mary Rose. The interior design to my mind is by far more interesting. And I like the interior enough to take on the challenge of showing how the use of space actually worked despite the darkened interior, narrow, long footprint and a ban on the use of any kind of flash photography.