Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery at the National Railway Museum, York

Trains, locomotion and simple engineering captivate children’s imagination. Wonderlab at the National Railway Museum will inspire future generations of engineers and inventors. It will excite, stimulate and challenge young minds, highlighting sustainability and energy use whilst encouraging hands on experimentation and creative exploration. Our design will explore different forms of ‘Motion’ evoked by railway engineering, particularly the perception of relative motion experienced in relation to static volumes, surfaces, textures and light. The engaging and intuitive open plan workshop will foster social interaction, dialogue and learning around interactive exhibits. Whilst appealing to a cross-generational audience, it will target 7–14-year-olds. Our approach promotes a collaborative, inquisitive and broad dialogue-based creative design process that physically, culturally, and socially brings together existing and new audiences whilst seamlessly stitching new and old together. Sited in the former locomotive repair workshop, the scheme draws inspiration from its layered history and authentic, raw interior. A family of new ‘engineering’ timber structures, reminiscent of iconic locomotive fragments, have been introduced to define zones and create areas of intimacy within the largely open plan gallery. Their shape and construction celebrates the creative process and language of core railway engineering principles. Housing a theatre space, learning space and a ‘conductive wall’, they take inspiration from key exhibits within the museum. The ‘Briefing Space’, for example, draws inspiration from the Ellerman Lines steam locomotive and creates a surreal and engaging play on scale where visitors metaphorically transform into the size of steam molecules. A new timber lining within the perimeter of the space helps to moderate the gallery’s scale and adds a sense of warmth and calm against which the interactive exhibits are set. The lining gently evolves to incorporate benches, seating, storage and viewing portals. New finishes are layered upon existing surfaces and are deliberately in their natural state, with an exposed honest finish. The historical wear and tear of the iconic workshop, such as that of the concrete floor, is left exposed and celebrated. The memory, rawness and energy of the space’s current iconic use is retained. The larger permanent structures, such as the wheel drop, railway pits and crane, are re-activated, establishing the framework that supports Wonderlab’s new content.