A new collections building on a brownfield site in north-east England, creating new opportunities for the public to engage with the national collection of railway vehicles.

Locomotion is part of the National Railway Museum and a partnership between the Science Museum Group and Durham County Council. The museum site is over 1km long and includes a length of the world's first public railway, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and the buildings associated with rail engineer and innovator Timothy Hackworth.

Located on the site of a former banana warehouse the new 2,050sqm building accommodates 47 railway vehicles for public display, with conservation care and support facilities.

Conceived as an open access collection store, the building combines the material efficiencies of the ubiquitous industrial shed with the calm simplicity of the white cube gallery to allow visitors to better enjoy more of the museum’s collection. The design increases the density of the museum’s previous displays to intensify the material experience of large-scale objects.

A wide monopitch roof spans across six lanes of display tracks, draining rainwater beyond the southern edge of the building to ensure the long-term protection of the collection. A steel portal frame is wrapped in a high performance, air-tight envelope, prioritising passive design to reduce the energy used in operation. Obsidian aluminium panels provide a material shimmer, reflecting the changing light and perception of the building’s mass throughout the day.

The building is both epic and intimate, reconciling the scale of the railway in the landscape with visitors’ proximity to rail vehicles in the museum. Sited diagonally across the site to avoid drains and mines below, the building’s 80m length is visually exaggerated from the main visitor approach. Three large pairs of train access doors allow rail tracks to extend out from the interior across the external apron. The two visitor entrances are defined by pop-up parapets and airlock lobbies, introducing a human scale to the long horizontal structure. Cream panels around the entrances create distinct graphic figures that recall the signal posts and water stations that punctuate the lineside landscape.

AOC designed both the building and the exhibition, ensuring the architecture actively supports and resonates with the collection.

Rail vehicles are displayed on reused tracks set on ballast, creating a sense of the exterior inside. Continuous linear fittings provide a uniform light for vehicles, with perimeter track lighting enhancing photographic prints and objects mounted on the gallery walls.

"an intimate, even visceral, experience of (mainly) metal hulks rarely encountered in such proximity or so beautifully illuminated"

John Jervis, RIBA Journal

Level access and a polished concrete floor create an inclusive, step-free experience for all visitors. Thematic and vehicle information panels, designed for reassembly and integrated with headphones and screens, provide a flexible narrative overlay. Floor markings and barriers appropriate the colours and patterns of railway platform graphics to support the visitor experience.

The design team used passive design principles and active systems to create a lean, low carbon, collection store. A highly insulated, highly efficient envelope reduces the heating and cooling requirements for the building. An ambitious airtightness target was set, which reduces conditioned air leaving the building and unwanted cold air entering.

North facing glazed openings allow visitors to enjoy views out to the railway landscape whilst reducing the impact of direct sunlight on the collection and unwanted solar gain. Energy efficient LED lighting, heat recovery and smart controls have been installed and low carbon air source heat pumps deliver heat to the building, reducing the reliance on fossil fuels. The building has been future-proofed to allow for the installation of photovoltaic panels on the roof to generate electricity from a renewable source. Constructed 35% more economically than the original 2004 building, Locomotion New Hall will achieve a 16% reduction in operational energy use.

The landscape for New Hall is based on a strategy of minimum intervention with maximum improvements to visitor experience and environmental footprint. Reuse, repurposing and recycling of materials are key to the approach, with existing hard landscapes repurposed and green infrastructure features used to create an attractive multifunctional landscape with improved biodiversity. The creation of new brownfield habitats with landscape structures and ephemeral ruderal species links to existing railway landscapes typologies.

Rainwater is collected from the roof and directed by downpipes to a series of planted swales cut out of the existing hard standing. These interconnected swales overflow into a dedicated detention basin seeded with a wet meadow species. Surface water is drained into the same system and porous surfaces are introduced to the north, south and east of building in the form of cut outs in the brownfield gardens, the wedge and gravel lawn.

International design competition. First Prize. Realised 2024.