Project: Science Museum


The Science Museum in London is undergoing a major £60m facelift, which will see new exhibition spaces by Zaha Hadid, Wilkinson Eyre, Muf and Coffey Architects. Cate St Hill pays a visit to the latest gallery, dedicated to the history of information technology, by Universal Design Studio.


Blueprint

We've come a long way from telegrams, the wireless and Morse code, even manual telephones and dial-up Internet, all in a relatively short amount of time. Children today expect their devices to have a touch screen and the Internet at the swipe of a finger, yet it was only 24 years ago that the World Wide Web was invented, and 25 years since Gulf War soldiers used GPS for the first time. It is perhaps not surprising then that no one has thought to create a permanent gallery dedicated to the history of information and communication technologies in the UK before now. Technology moves so fast that we simply haven't had the time to stop and think how we got here.

Now London's Science Museum has opened a new gallery titled Information Age: Six Networks That Changed Our World. Designed by Universal Design Studio, it explores the technological breakthroughs that have transformed how we communicate over the past 200 years. There are 800-plus objects, encompassing Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, Alan Turing's code-breaking Colossus computer and the first transatlantic cable that connected Europe and North America in minutes rather than weeks. The opening in October was marked with the Queen sending her first tweet.

A real communication satellite hangs above the gallery. Photo: Leon Chew for Universal Design Studio
A real communication satellite hangs above the gallery. Photo: Leon Chew for Universal Design Studio

The centre of the gallery is marked by a monstrous, copper tuning coil from Rugby Radio Station, which just brushes the ceiling and looks like an enormous spider's web. One of 80 objects donated by BT, it was once part of the station's powerful transmitter that tuned an aerial system and enabled Cold War communications. The rest of the rectangular space is broken down into six themes, interspersed with interactive black booths, or 'storyboxes' as Universal describes them. They help direct visitors around key objects, from the only example of a Russian computer in a Western museum to a real communication satellite -- the sister of which is spinning around the world as you read this -- and a Marconi transmitter used by the BBC. These objects, with their switches, knobs and buttons, are beautiful in their own right, even without their unique back stories.

An elliptical walkway loops around the gallery, like a network cable, giving another perspective of the space and connecting the double-height, black booths. And, while you can't push the buttons of the historic objects, here you'll find clever, animated displays, projections and interactive games. There are examples of low-tech solutions too, such as a colourful call box and a talking drum that carries messages through its beat, both from Cameroon. Says Edward Barber, co-founder of Universal Design Studio: 'We hope the gallery will excite and inspire future generations; not only educating visitors but surprising and delighting them too.'

Universal's gallery is part of a raft of improvements to the 86-year-old museum, including Zaha Hadid's £5m mathematics gallery and Muf's £4m interactive exhibition, both due to open in 2016. Hadid's will focus on the stories, tools and ideas behind mathematics from the 17th century to the present and Muf's will be a successor to the museum's already popular Launch Pad. And that's not all, Wilkinson Eyre Architects has a 'ground-breaking' £24m suite of medical galleries finishing in 2018, while Coffey Architects has designed a new £1.8m library and research centre inside the museum's Wellcome Wolfson Building, which is planned to open next year. It's an exciting move for the museum, and while you may feel old seeing an Eightie's Snoopy telephone on display, in no time at all, the smartphone in your hand will be there too.








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