The Royal Observatory in Greenwich is planning a major redevelopment, which aims to improve visitors’ access, improve some of the exhibition rooms, and create more space for events.
With nearly a million visitors each year, but also a site that was designed more for science than visitors, the museum says it needs to improve access to the area to ensure its fit for the future. The museum carried out a study in 2014 to address the shortcomings, but a decade later, it still hadn’t carried out the work, and it says that it can’t delay any longer.
One of the problems with the estate is that it’s effectively split into two separate sections linked by a narrow path on the edge of Greenwich Park Hill. The plans will widen the path by building a new section that overhangs the hill, and apart from making the link route less crowded, it’ll also make the two halves feel more connected as a single estate.
A new entrance would sit in the middle of this enlarged platform.
That however means that whereas at the moment, parts of the estate are still free to walk around, the revamp will see the entire site become a paid venue. That’s slightly less bad than it sounds, as the buildings are all paid venues, so the free area is the ability to walk around the outside of the buildings. However, the change will mean the free courtyard spaces will all be behind the paid entrance building.
The redevelopment will create a new entrance for the whole site, new stairs and, for the first time, a lift to provide accessible visits to the Great Equatorial Building, which houses the main telescope.
The exhibition buildings will be refurbished, and of course, there’s a new cafe. A new covered space would be created underneath the paved Astronomers Court, next to the Planetarium, giving the site a large events space to use for commercial and educational purposes. The proposed space has been designed to provide a large, column-free space capable of accommodating a wide range of activities for both daytime and nighttime.
While there are some large interventions into the estate, the core aim is to tidy up a rather jumbled site that evolved over the centuries as a science centre and was never expected to welcome a million people a year to visit it.
The planning application is now with Greenwich Council for consideration.
This article was published on ianVisits
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