March 11 2005

A new museum is set to be built on Liverpool’s waterfront after receiving a funding boost from Objective One. The Museum of Liverpool was one of the elements of Will Alsop’s Cloud, or Fourth Grace scheme, which was shelved last July. The museum’s future was uncertain, but now a dedicated building has been designed by Danish architects 3XN on a nearby site at Mann Island, owned by National Museums Liverpool (NML).

The proposed design is deliberately low-rise and forms two crossing wings in white stone which slope down to the promenade. It will have four floors, including two mezzanines with views out to the river and city. Architect Kim Nielson said he didn’t look at the Alsop design too much: “We knew it was a sensitive site. We didn’t want to fight the Three Graces, and we didn’t want it to be too urban, though it has references to the old shipyards and sculpted ship shapes when seen from the river. It’s an open, democratic structure more than a building.”

3XN, which has offices in Arhus and Copenhagen, beat off Zaha Hadid and Daniel Liebeskind for the museum project, which aims to be completed by October 2008. The practice has designed cultural buildings across Europe including the Royal Danish Embassy in Berlin, the Centre for Modern Music in Amsterdam and an Oceanarium for the North Sea Museum at Hirtshals in Denmark.

“Designs are still at an early stage,” said David Fleming, director of NML, “and whatever is proposed will be the subject of great debate in Liverpool. That debate will centre around the role of modern architecture in a city with so many beautiful Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Liverpool has had very little quality modern architecture, and so something on this scale on this site will excite all sorts of opinion. There are those who like the city and the Pierhead as it is and who will resist it; and there are those who want to see a return to an architectural cutting edge in a city once noted for this, to denote that Liverpool is a great 21st century city as well as a city with a great past.”

The Objective One funds comprise £2.5milluon for pre-development costs and £5million towards the building, and will lever in £2.5million from the North West Development Agency, which had backed the original museum plan. A further £30million earmarked for the Cloud project by NWDA remains unspent. NML await a decision on whether this will be transferred to the new museum, and will also be applying to other funding bodies, including HLF, for the remainder.

The new building, though on a much smaller scale than Alsop’s Cloud, will be five times the size of the existing museum, and aims to have 80 per cent of its space accessible to the public. “We will be telling Liverpool’s story in a city history museum which, in terms of world city history museums, will be on an unprecedented scale,” said Janet Dugdale, keeper of social history at the Museum of Liverpool Life. “We have some great material which we currently just do not have space to display. We are working with 3XN to create a building which responds to the needs of the museum and the magnificent site. We are excited by the opportunity to tell Liverpool’s story at the most significant location for the city. What better site than being able to build a museum that looks into the city and out over the sea?”

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