Energy Revolution Gallery

Designed with Unknown Works, the new permanent gallery embraces circular design principles, showcasing how the past, present, and future of energy systems are shaped by human ingenuity.

Recycled and repurposed materials, including 225 galvanised steel shelving units from the museum’s Blythe House storage facility, were transformed into modular display plinths and structures. These elements, integrated with showcases, lighting, and graphics, can be fully dismantled and reused in the future. A whole-life carbon assessment informed key decisions throughout the design process, helping to reduce the project’s carbon footprint significantly, in line with the Science Museum Group’s net zero goals for 2033.

Our team worked to ensure the gallery’s environmental systems aligned seamlessly with its sustainable design vision. The primary energy use in the old gallery was for power to exhibits and audio-visual systems, particularly for display lighting. Working with the lighting designer, Nulty, we engineered a low-energy lighting scheme with on-demand control, reducing the amount of time the lights are on and saving significant energy. Prior to the strip-out of the previous installation, we recorded the electrical energy consumed by the gallery, allowing the Museum to make a direct comparison between new and old.

The Energy Revolution gallery is heated, cooled, and ventilated by a central system that provides environmental control to all of the Wellcome Wing galleries. The system is designed to meet the individual requirements of each gallery, with cooling and heating delivered to match demand. However, over time, control set points had been adjusted and the system has become unbalanced, expending more energy than required to maintain conditions. We conducted a building-wide review of system operation, commissioned intrusive survey work to identify in-use issues, and set the scope to reset and rebalance the system. Restoring the environmental control system to operate as originally designed, matching supply to demand, has cut energy use throughout the entire Wellcome Wing.

The result is a thought-provoking gallery that not only inspires conversations about energy and decarbonisation but also sets a benchmark for sustainable building services design in cultural spaces.