The Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library

Guided by community engagement, the Harris brief aimed to tackle key challenges with accessibility, representation, vibrancy, and creativity. While the Harris was cherished by its loyal audience, perceived barriers to access and belonging were heard through feedback and its potential to be so much more was recognised. As the Harris' audiences continued to evolve, the building’s tired interiors and outdated environmental controls limited opportunities for ambitious, creative exhibitions. Furthermore, its fragmented spaces reinforced the separation of museum, library, and gallery services, resulting in a disjointed visitor experience.

This was the starting point for the #Harrisyourplace.

The Harris Your Place project is an evolution of the existing Art Gallery, Museum and Library creating an innovative environment that presents the various offers in a flexible, engaging and equitable manner. Working with the Grade I listed status of The Harris and its magnificent architecture created an opportunity to create something unique.

Key to achieving the aims of Harris Your Place were improvements to the permeability and accessibility of the building. The approach balanced sensitive conservation with essential modernisation. The design improves accessibility wherever possible, carries out critical repairs and enhances the flexibility of the galleries to better serve its community.

In response to user feedback, a new offer was designed: an innovative environment fusing museum, library, and art gallery collections and services to provide a flexible, community-led offer, allowing the Grade I listed building and its collections to be presented more effectively.

We worked closely with Ralph Applebaum Associates and stakeholder groups throughout the project to help realise this innovative vision, bringing together architecture, exhibition design and interpretation to create a visitor experience that is welcoming, intuitive, and culturally resonant.

The Art Gallery, Museum, and Library offers are now presented in mixed-mode spaces across the building. Library shelves are interspersed by exhibition cases and original artworks adorning the walls. The new offer spills out of the galleries and into the main central space that rises through the four stories of the building to the lantern tower, activating the whole building.

The architecture of the Harris is celebrated in the new designs. The lofty, grand volumes of the classical buildings have been revealed and previous insertions removed. Where lowered ceilings and mezzanine levels interrupted the architecture, the spaces are revealed again, and the Harris' significance is supported.

The building fabric has been repaired with stone restoration, roof repair, original windows repaired, and the rooflight restored. Internally, the original radiators have been retrofitted with individual thermostatic controls hidden beneath the floors, allowing for a vastly improved and controllable environment in the building whilst retaining its features and essential character.

Working closely with exhibition designers Ralph Applebaum Associates, gallery cases and new interior fittings are bespoke designs that reference the classical proportions of the rooms and the architectural character of the building.

The Foucault pendulum is a 35-metre pendulum that offers a glimpse into 19th-century scientific innovation. Originally installed in 1909 and reinstated in 1992, it demonstrates one of physics' most elegant proofs of Earth's rotation. As the heavy pendulum swings in a fixed direction, Earth rotates beneath it, creating the illusion that the pendulum's plane of oscillation is shifting.

Previously hanging off-centre, the intention was to rehang the pendulum centrally through the atrium. To do this, we designed the restored rooflight to house the pendulum's bracket, aligning perfectly with the centre of the star on the decorative marble floor below. 

Accessibility was addressed by bringing level access to the Lancaster Road entrance and elevating its priority within the floor plan. A new café, shop and library flow from this axial entry point, with a new visitor facilities hub situated to the front of the building with accessible and changing places toilets. The flow within the building allows people to quickly drop off a library book in their lunch hour or to spend the day exploring the collections.

A temporary gallery has been created to GIS Standards, which improves the ability to host new and exciting exhibitions with the opening Wallace and Gromit exhibition kick-starting the programme with record visitor numbers.

The proposals were thoroughly informed by the Conservation Plan produced by the Buttress Heritage Consultancy team. The plan outlined the history and significance of the Harris, and captures the issues and opportunities that face it. This was based on consultation with staff from across the organisation,

We undertook an update to the conservation plan, collaborating with students at UCLan to give them valuable experience and insight into the Heritage Consultant role. Alongside our team, students helped us to document the spaces within the museum and to collate the gazetteer. We also ran a series of workshops with staff across the museum, including curators, maintenance and administrative staff, to understand the challenges they face, and their aspirations for the building’s future. 

In every project we undertake, sustainability is core to our approach. When we work with a building as significant as the Harris, we adopt a whole-building strategy that balances thermal, ventilation and operational efficiency without compromising heritage significance and visitor experience.

We have adopted a hierarchical approach with fabric-first enhancements, passive design principles, and localised intervention based on specific collections care and building use. 

The Harris' original ornate cast-iron radiators have been restored and retrofitted with discreet individual thermostatic controls. The windows have been restored and original glazing fitted with UV film, then rebeaded for a seamless finish. All are openable and allow natural ventilation. These are just some ways in which the original features of the building are celebrated and retained in use, working with the significance rather than against it.