The practice is working with Wright & Wright Architects, Webb Yates Engineers, Tom Massey Studio and Daisy Froud.
The submitted designs are an ‘evolved’ version of the concept that won an invited competition last year. They include two new visitor welcome pavilions and landscaped gardens.
The northern entrance includes internal reconfiguration to better integrate it with Montague Place and improve accessibility and inclusivity, alongside landscaping. Meanwhile, the southern entrance forecourt will be opened up to the public and visitors.
The two pavilions, inspired by the museum’s architecture, use a palette of timber, glass and natural stone, with a scalloped inflection to the roofline that recalls the fluting of the columns that wrap their way around the museum’s outer walls.
Studio Weave won the high-profile contest last December, topping a shortlist that also included Periscope with Assemble; Publica with Carmody Groarke; East Architecture and Hayatsu Architects with Bradley-Hole Schoenaich Landscape; and Collective Cultures – a collaboration between OMMX, AANF, Msoma Architects, YAA Projects – with J&L Gibbons.
This contest was only open to members of Lot 4 of the Greater London Authority’s Architecture + Urbanism Framework.
Studio Weave’s submitted British Museum plans (November 2025) – south forecourt
Studio Weave founding director Je Ahn said: ‘The British Museum is an extraordinary repository of two million years of human history within Grade I-listed buildings in central London. We see our role as helping the public navigate between the everyday world and the museum, where they encounter stories of other worlds.
‘The new landscape and pavilions draw on ideas of commonality and curiosity. They are populated by plants, objects, materials and commissions that bring historical storytelling into the public space, softening the hard boundary between the museum and its surroundings.’
British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan said: ‘As the most visited building in the UK, and one of the top three most visited museums in the world, first impressions count.
‘With the visitor welcome pavilions, we’re striving to create the most inspiring greeting possible for the 6.5 million people (and counting) from across the nation and around the world who come through our doors each year – whether it’s their first visit or 15th, aged five or 95.’
A parallel design competition to overhaul a third of the museum’s galleries, which launched before the welcome experience competition, was won by Lebanese-born, Paris-based Lina Ghotmeh in February. Plans have not yet been submitted for this project.
The larger proposals previously faced controversy due to financial backing from fossil fuel giant BP. This led to the resignation of trustee Muriel Gray, former chair of the Glasgow School of Art, in 2023 while Doug Parr, the UK policy director for Greenpeace, described the deal as ‘surely one of the biggest, most brazen greenwashing sponsorship deals the sector has ever seen’.
The entrances competition sites