Bradford's National Science and Media Museum is the destination for all things science and media-related.
AOC Architecture Transforms National Science and Media Museum in Bradford
AOC Architecture has completed a significant redevelopment of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, creating a more coherent, accessible, and engaging museum experience for a diverse public.
New Sound and Vision Galleries
The redevelopment includes two floors of permanent gallery space, featuring over 500 objects from the museum’s collections focused on photography, film, television, animation, video games, and sound technologies. The galleries are carefully themed into zones—Innovation (early media technologies), Identities (media as self-expression), Storytelling (visual effects, sound design), and Everywhere (media’s pervasiveness in daily life).
Design and Visitor Experience
The redevelopment reimagines the main foyer, opens up spaces, and creates new visual connections to clarify visitor flow across seven floors of exhibition and three cinemas. A new lift linking eight building levels enhances vertical circulation and spatial legibility, making navigation more intuitive, especially to the IMAX cinema.
Engagement and Interactivity
Immersive audiovisual and digital media provide intense, sensory moments that engage visitors with the history and impact of media technologies. A signature interactive artwork, Circus by Nayan Kulkarni, uses digital mirrors in a double-height connecting space between two gallery levels to make visitors part of the museum’s narrative, emphasizing their dual role as both media creators and consumers.
Inclusive and Accessible Design
AOC collaborated closely with local access groups for Blind and Visually Impaired, D/deaf, Learning Disabled, and Neurodiverse audiences to embed inclusive design principles throughout. Workshops with young people, sixth form students, and Bradford Community Broadcasting helped co-design content reflecting local voices alongside national heritage.
Materiality and Atmosphere
The galleries employ a calm, natural materials palette that enhances sensory qualities of the collections and supports storytelling with both local relevance and broader significance. This approach balances object-focused displays with immersive, dramatic audiovisual scenes to cater to diverse visitor engagement styles.
Environmental and Back-of-House Improvements
Beyond galleries, the project improved the museum’s environmental performance and upgraded infrastructure behind the scenes as part of a comprehensive masterplan aligned with Bradford’s City of Culture status in 2025.
Construction and Collaboration
Bermar Building is the main contractor, and Workhaus Projects is the exhibition contractor for the museum's redevelopment. Fraser Muggeridge Studio is responsible for the graphic design, and Studio ZNA is credited for the lighting design. The museum's project aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2033, and a fabric-first approach and extensive material reuse have been employed to minimize embodied carbon. Improved ventilation, LED lighting, and new services plant are included in the museum's redevelopment to reduce operational energy use.
This transformation represents a “once-in-a-generation” redevelopment that makes the National Science and Media Museum more coherent, accessible, and engaging for a diverse public, embedding local cultural relevance within a cutting-edge museum experience. The foyer, with its ceramic floor and timber-lined walls, enhances sound quality and visual warmth, providing a welcoming and inclusive space for all visitors.
- The new sound and vision galleries at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, created by AOC Architecture, are meticulously themed into zones, including one about climate-change and environmental-science as part of the 'Storytelling' zone.
- In their collaboration with local access groups, AOC Architecture emphasized sustainable-living by implementing inclusive design principles, ensuring the museum caters to a diverse audience, including those with disabilities and neurodiverse individuals.
- Beyond the gallery spaces, AOC Architecture improved the museum’s environmental performance to align with Bradford’s City of Culture status in 2025, aiming for the museum to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2033.
- In the reimagined main foyer, AOC Architecture employed a home-and-garden approach with a calm, natural materials palette to support both local relevance and broader significance in the museum’s storytelling.
- The National Science and Media Museum's redevelopment showcases a blend of culture, technology, and science, encouraging visitors to explore the impact of media technologies on climate-change, lifestyle, and the environment through immersive, digital media experiences.
