Unknown Works’ Energy Revolution Gallery for the Science Museum encapsulates the subject matter employing low carbon construction and both reused and reusable materials
One item is missing from the new permanent Energy Revolution Gallery at the Science Museum, London. Designed by RIBAJ Future Winner Unknown Works, the exhibition’s subject is our renewable and low-energy future. However, what’s not included is an explanation of how the practice’s design itself revolves around these themes and circularity. Two of the co-founders, Theo Games Petrohilos and Ben Hayes, assure that this is on its way.
The Energy Revolution Gallery replaces the Atmosphere Gallery, which included a display about the aurora borealis. It is located to the back of the museum on the second floor of the vast West Hall, a futuristic high-tech addition designed by MacCormac Jamieson Prichard in 2000. The 800m² space is a platform suspended in the void of the hall and the only walls are as you enter from either end.
Unknown Works saw off competition from established practices to win the open bid in 2021, partly for the way it proposed to integrate the themes of the display into the fabric of the build, and partly for the team it assembled, which included a sustainability consultant and showed the seriousness of its intent about sustainability.
More radical, although you wouldn’t know it from the sharpness of the execution, is that the design is made using 225 galvanised steel shelving units rescued from the now-redundant Blythe House storage facility in Olympia. Games Petrohilos and Hayes explain that when the practice went to the museum’s archive in Wiltshire, with its new storage system, their question was ‘What has happened to the old stuff?’. This prompted them to request that 500 shelves be put aside. Added to this upcycling, the display can be altered easily (for example, information panels are inserted into fixings as sliding strips, rather than attached directly) and it is designed with demountability and reuse in mind (display headings are made using letter plates that double as stencils and can be re-laid). Other materials are natural or recyclable: plywood, steel, aluminium.
‘Gallery design is still so wasteful. They use a lot of MDF, throw stuff away, do set works and break everything down,’ says Games Petrohilos. This exhibition challenges that and demonstrates how, with invention, it’s possible to achieve net zero targets. The Science Museum has committed to that by 2033, but this is its first foray to change decades of behaviour, which is why it is important that the display tells that story.
The archive shelving forms the structure of the plinths that are the basis of the design. On entering, visitors are enveloped by red moulded plywood walls. Ahead is a hanging light in front of an inscription: ‘It all starts with an idea. One moment can spark a revolution.’ The bulb gets brighter as visitors approach – a perfect Instagram spot to get people going.
From there, panels briefly explain why an energy revolution is necessary, told through images of our changing climate. Then, passing the only stand to display its reused shelving structure through glass, the exhibition opens as an array of wedge-shaped plinths circling a central seating area. The plinths ascend to the edges allowing items to be shown at varying heights so visitors can absorb the exhibition in the round, taking in its two halves – one about future energy and the other on how to create a low-carbon future. The circular layout presents the subject as non-linear, whereby there is no single way to transform energy, but that there are many routes, each represented by a segment of the circle. It’s an elegant metaphor that aids circulation, and makes the gallery appealing to explore.
What are the segments? The future energy section has nuclear, solar, and hydrogen, wind and tidal. The displays present the histories, technologies, opportunities and risks of each. For instance, the nuclear section has a piece of the 1957 Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly to fuse hydrogen with helium, and information about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Larger objects encircle the rear loop, including a solar array and a chunk of wind turbine. Examples and objects have been sourced as locally as possible, while materials and building components primarily come from within 100km to reduce the carbon footprint. Unknown Works’ Brightbox, its off-grid classroom in a shipping container in Uganda, has become an exhibit in itself. The display on our future kicks off with a tracker that represents the decarbonisation of Britain’s electricity since 2010. Around it, exhibits explore the areas where reducing carbon reliance will have the biggest impact: insulating buildings, electrical storage, transport and mobility. Objects include the earliest batteries and bicycles.
The design was developed using whole-life carbon assessment to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions estimate from 113 to 53 tonnes. The gallery tells an important story, but it is Unknown Works’ dedication to embodying the message of the exhibition in its design and construction that deserves special celebration and a visit.