The London Pavilion is a Grade II listed building at the south end of Shaftesbury Avenue, occupying an entire city block on the eastern side of London’s iconic Piccadilly Circus. The current building was originally created as a Variety Theatre in 1895 but has since been substantially compromised through years of unsympathetic subdivision.
Body Worlds London will occupy over 28,000sqft of prime exhibition space, directly facing Piccadilly Circus, while also catalysing a wider series of improvements to the building including a general cleaning of the historic façade.
Body Worlds’ exhibition is spread across 7 floors of the building, from basement level to roof. Double-storey spaces are carved out of the floorplates for larger exhibits, alongside new sections of glass floor in some areas and raised platforms in other areas to maximise the dramatic impact of the pieces.
The architectural design adopts a similar approach to Bodyworlds, stripping back the interior spaces to reveal the ‘skeleton’ of the building to visitors. This idea is extended into the design of new bespoke furniture which is made up of stacked sections of computer-machined plywood to create larger forms of desking and display space shaped like human bones.
It also feels like something coming home; our historic research into the London Pavilion discovered that in 1859 the first building on this site included, astonishingly, ‘Dr Kahn’s “Delectable Museum of Anatomy”?!
Client: Confidential
Area: 2,600sqm
Use: Museum
Status: Under Construction
Evening Express - Body Worlds exhibition to open in permanent home
The Guardian - Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds to open London museum
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Body Worlds London will occupy over 28,000sqft of prime exhibition space, directly facing Piccadilly Circus, while also catalysing a wider series of improvements to the building including a general cleaning of the historic façade.
Body Worlds’ exhibition is spread across 7 floors of the building, from basement level to roof. Double-storey spaces are carved out of the floorplates for larger exhibits, alongside new sections of glass floor in some areas and raised platforms in other areas to maximise the dramatic impact of the pieces.
The architectural design adopts a similar approach to Bodyworlds, stripping back the interior spaces to reveal the ‘skeleton’ of the building to visitors. This idea is extended into the design of new bespoke furniture which is made up of stacked sections of computer-machined plywood to create larger forms of desking and display space shaped like human bones.
It also feels like something coming home; our historic research into the London Pavilion discovered that in 1859 the first building on this site included, astonishingly, ‘Dr Kahn’s “Delectable Museum of Anatomy”?!
Client: Confidential
Area: 2,600sqm
Use: Museum
Status: Under Construction
Evening Express - Body Worlds exhibition to open in permanent home
The Guardian - Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds to open London museum
