Tackling climate change and ensuring museum sustainability

Image: The Horniman Museum, London - courtesy Horniman Museum

Museums around the world have been upgrading their buildings to meet net zero targets while trying to preserve their collections for the next generation.

The Director of the Horniman Museum in south London, Gordon Seabright, joined Gavin Miller and other contributors to our 'Cultural Cities' discussion event, hosted by Historic Royal Palaces at the Tower of London last month to talk about meeting the needs of new more diverse audiences, protecting collections and expanding museum facilities.

The Horniman Museum has installed 30 solar panels on the roof of the building, which will help power a new gallery. The panels cover an area more than twice the size of the mosaic at the front of the Museum and will help save 4.1 tonnes of CO2e/year – roughly equivalent it says to the emissions generated from driving from London to Cape Town and back – and about £3,000 per year in electricity costs. The historic masonry has been repaired and the gallery’s decorative brickwork has been restored. The scaffolding was then taken down in March 2026. There have been renovations to the historic glasshouse and a new cafe has been built.

Gordon told the forum:

'One of my many past jobs was that I ran the Eden Project, and so became really interested in the environmental aspect of attractions but also the storytelling aspect of that. So there's two aspects to what you say and one around storytelling is about our responsibility you know on how we serve, while we're a global museum, a mid-sized global museum, how we serve primarily four of the poorest boroughs of London.

'We have a responsibility to give people a sense of agency when it comes to the climate crisis and we can do that through storytelling in part about how insanely hard it is to make a Victorian museum carbon neutral. The irony being that the Victorian bits are the easiest bits because it's the modern buildings that are most rubbish. We've got that responsibility but then we've also got a responsibility to do it.

'I think we can get there, I think we can get to net zero, we are publicly saying we'll be there by 2040, I think we'll get there by 2035, but that is somewhat government dependent because the last bit, the last we've got a path that gets us there and the last bit depends on the UK's electricity supply being decarbonised and current government policy is going that way.

'But what we had to do was sort of chop the job into bits and figure out how do you get there. I guess in the last year we've knocked 20% of our energy use and that's primarily through a buildings management system that's a bit more clever than what we had before. Solar a little bit, maybe 3% of it that but the main deal is being a bit cleverer about it and then we've got the next big chunk will be taking the two newest and worst buildings and decarbonizing them so that by 2029 maybe 2028 we've got no gas power

'I mean the worst is the butterfly house.... on the top of the hill there's like a greenhouse with a tropical environment inside with the butterflies living there but it's a single skin glasshouse and it's gas-powered so that's insane. Just sort that and that's 14% of our problem gone away. So we kind of know the way there and we can tell the stories to our visitors about how hard that is and at the same time we like to tell the story about water use because you know we get through about almost 10 million cubic meters of water a year and most of that is in the loos and that's terrible.'

Gordon was asked how some of the stories about the objects have changed over time:

'There's a garden story, because the ornaments at the museum were set in the 1680s gardens, so there's a garden story which is around changing the planting so that we have drought-resistant plants. There's an aquarium story, because we've got an aquarium in the basement, and we have to make salt water for that, and that was all being flushed away, and so now we've learned how to desalinate the wastewater and use it to water the gardens and flush the loos, but then there's also the story about what we do in terms of serving the community with a museum that is about the stuff that matters to them. And you're quite right, we've had to close, I mean we've still got the Natural History Gallery closed for another year or so, because most of the interpretation hadn't been touched for as long as 60 years. It was very colonial, and it didn't mention climate change.'

Some of the objects from Ukraine through research have turned out to be completely different to how they were described originally and Gordon commented:

'That's been fascinating. So we've got about 350,000 bits of stuff. We're an object-based museum, we think there's a magic in objects, so you'd better be able to tell the right story about those. And it has intrigued me how much there is to learn about that and it's a theme we've done in the last year.

'This time last year I was in Kyiv working with some Ukrainian museum people, so we've made friends with them and they helped us then to look at the objects in our collection from Ukraine and figure out what they really are because they were, as it turns out, they were mostly collected in the 1940s and 50s, and reading the explanations of what they are they were probably interpreted by a curator who was was more Polish than Ukrainian.

'Basically, the interpretation was just plain wrong. And so one of the things we may be able to do is tell the true stories of those objects, because our Ukrainian friends have helped us do that, and put things on display with what was our first trilingual exhibition, actually, in English, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar. There's not a huge Crimean Tatar community in London, but those that there are were able to see their stuff interpreted for them.'

Image: artist's impression of the National Gallery London's Project Domani - courtesy Kin Creatives

Gavin Miller, Director of MICA Architects then joined the conversation and spoke about the expectations around gallery display and public realm involved in the new National Gallery Project Domani in London:

'I should say we are part of a team, so it's not just us. We are obviously delighted to have won. The team consists of Kengo Kuma, a Japanese Tokyo-based architect, MICA, which is our company, and BDP. We have been working as a team, and I think we see the benefit of the creative insight which comes from Japan initially, but we've, as you said, a lot of experience in cultural institutions in the UK, so I think we try and help and support and guide the response of the planning application and so on. We have been working as a team, but yes, as you said, it's an absolutely wonderful, inspiring opportunity.

As Project Domani is concerned with the back of the gallery, and remodelling St Vincent House, Gavin talked about the importance of making connections between the London squares as well as providing commercial spaces such as cafes:

'I think it's going to be transformative. And I think when you talk about the Ashmolean, I think our kind of legacy comes from the millennial era of museums when things like cafes were bad words. You know, when mixing commerce and culture was not seen to be a good thing. I remember when we proposed the roof garden, the roof cafe at the Ashmolean, it was thought it would never work. No one would ever go there. You need it at the bottom, et cetera, et cetera. So yes, that kind of model, and just observing, I guess, it's obvious that the National Gallery has a frontage, a front door onto Trafalgar Square. This is the back site of the National Gallery, but a really significant site, and it gives you the opportunity to connect to Leicester Square.

Gavin was asked whether the retrofit was going to be challenging:

'Obviously, you have to take these things very, very seriously. And the initial studies really show that it's not really possible to retain. In order to create 21st century quality galleries, we think it's not really fully feasible, as it stands, to retain fully the existing building. But I do stress, these are very early days. The visuals show a new scheme. But this is something that has to be worked through. And it obviously needs to be considered very carefully. And that's why, in terms of the potential that's shown here, we're showing the opportunities to connect public spaces together, to bring greenery and landscape at street level, but also, as you said, at roof level as well. Urban greening and using sustainable materials - It's all important still, minimizing in-situ concrete, et cetera. So the whole narrative is a sustainable one, but it's a complex picture, and it's something has literally just started.'

Project Domani is a £750 million campaign that will redefine the National Gallery for the next century, creating new spaces to house an expanded collection. Following our 200th anniversary celebrations, we announced Project Domani, which will welcome a brand-new wing and public realm to the Gallery. This will be the largest transformation since the Gallery’s formation in 1824. 

The National Gallery states:

'Our ambition is to create an architecturally distinguished, sustainable, and state-of-the-art new wing and public space. The National Gallery’s renowned collection of great paintings and our ambition to develop this further for the benefit of a larger, more diverse public, demands a space that not only preserves and displays the artwork, but also elevates the visitor experience, enhancing the Gallery’s status as one of the most-visited museums in the world.

'The new wing will be built on the last remaining part of the National Gallery campus: St Vincent House. The property was acquired nearly 30 years ago, for the purpose of expanding gallery space, and currently houses a hotel and office complex.

The project aims to invigorate this corner of central London, connecting Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square. Embedding the Gallery as a cornerstone within London’s arts quarter, it will also cement our reputation as a leader in the art world and the UK’s commitment to culture and heritage.'

MICA Architects redeveloped The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, some years ago. The museum was established in 1683, and is the oldest museum in Britain. The new building is attached to the rear of the Greek revival building by Charles Robert Cockerell, built in 1845 as The University Galleries. The Ashmolean Museum relocated its collection to the extended University Galleries in 1894 and in 1908 combined to become The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, under the keepership of the renowned archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.

Its collections are among the most varied and extensive in the country. It possesses the most important collection of pre-Dynastic Egyptian material outside Cairo, the only great collection of Minoan antiquities outside Heraklion, the largest and most important collection of Raphael drawings in the world and the greatest Anglo Saxon collections outside the British Museum.

The new scheme involved the removal of the poor existing Victorian buildings behind the Cockerell building-built to house a rapidly growing collection under Evans, and later piecemeal accretions. These combined to give a very confusing route for the museum visitor.

MICA describes its project:

'The new building has six storeys, with a floor area of 9000m², 4000m² of which provides 100 per cent more display space. In addition to the new display space a new entrance from St Giles, and an Education Centre, Conservation studios and loading bay have also been created. The new museum space is built to modern standards, using an environmentally aware and efficient servicing strategy. The building is organised by two major axes established by Cockerell, creating a clear route throughout the building and unifying the entire museum and collection in a coherent manner.

'Two staircase lightwells are naturally lit with large windows and roof lights. Natural light is filtered vertically through the building to the lower ground level via inter-connecting, double-height galleries. A new rooftop café terrace gives views over the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford.

'The new Ashmolean Museum, which reopened in 2009 after a major renovation, has been an unequivocal success, and exceeded expectation in many ways. It has increased its visitor numbers, improved its accessibility and display, and enhanced its reputation as a world-class museum of art and archaeology.

'Commentators have attributed the success to the following:– The transformation of the museum's layout and design, which created more space, light and clarity for the collections and exhibitions.– The introduction of accessible, thematic galleries that showcase the connections and diversity of human cultures across time and geography.– The expansion of the education and outreach programs, which engage a wider and more diverse audience through events, workshops and online resources.– The ability to host internationally significant temporary exhibitions'