World Architecture Festival Award 2017
RIBA Award 2014
Civic Trust Award Michael Middleton Special Award 2014
Building Awards Project of the Year 2014
RICS Awards Design Through Innovation Award 2014
RICS Awards Tourism and Leisure Award 2014
Henry VIII’s favourite warship, the Mary Rose, sank during a battle with the French in 1545 with 500 men on board. After the hull of the ship was raised from the bed of the Solent in the full glare of publicity off Portsmouth in 1982, WilkinsonEyre was commissioned to design a museum to permanently house and display the wreck to the public.
The hull, supported in a dry dock, requires highly specialist environmental conditions to preserve it, so the design takes an inside-out approach, cradling the hull at the centre of the new museum.
A virtual hull has been created alongside this to represent the missing section, where the original artifacts are displayed in context. Galleries run the length of the ship, corresponding to the original deck levels and leading to further gallery space at the end of the dry dock.
Designing a museum for the Mary Rose and its artefacts was a challenge of many layers. 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. WilkinsonEyre worked with interior architects from Perkins + Will to devise the concept of designing from the inside out.
The remaining timbers of the ship are placed centre stage in a ship hall, with a virtual hull built alongside it to house the retrieved objects in their correct placing.
The context galleries are darkened and filled with the noise of creaking timbers, rushing wind and the sea to evoke the claustrophobic feeling of being below deck. The exterior of the building is a discreet enclosure, an abstraction of the original ship’s profile, that protects and hides the sparkle of its contents like a jewel box.
Design Development
