Key Information

• Date: 1993
• Client: National Lifeboat Museum, Poole
• Location: Dorset, UK

Overview

In 1994 we were contacted by members of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) Committee to prepare a preliminary design for a national heritage museum for the RNLI on the Quay at Poole. The project offered a great opportunity to clarify a design approach for an urban quayside situation.

The design provides the RNLI with a light, elegant 12-m-high steel ‘wind frame’ for the display of lifeboats. The frame may be used like a Dutch barn, with a roof which partly shelters the boats and illuminates them at night. This structure can be glazed or fully enclosed, to provide a full museum specification, including an art gallery, a shop and a wide screen cinema.

The white framed museum design is intended to provide Poole with a light, disciplined quayside architecture that could be adapted to a wide range of uses for the future. The dialogue with Poole is about how to encourage a unified strategy for individual quayside developments and the town’s waterfront.

Consultant Team

• Model Maker: Amalgam
• Photography: Eamon O’Mahoney