Winckley Square interior designer helps transform Manchester Museum

L-R: Rose Peploe and Lynsey Thompson from The Artistry House

A Winckley Square-based interior designer has helped transform Manchester Museum.

Artistry House Interiors designed a selection of non-gallery spaces in the 130-year-old museum, including the entrance area, café, shop, and prayer room.

Manchester Museum is one of the largest university museums in the UK. Its original neo-Gothic building was designed by renowned architect Alfred Waterhouse, and it is now home to around 4.5 million objects from natural sciences and human cultures.

The work of Artistry House Interiors is part of a £15 million project to transform the museum, which completed in February.

Manchester Museum coffee bar — The revamped coffee bar at Manchester Museum

Manchester Museum interior — The designers used a selection of rich colours and authentic materials

Artistry House Interiors designer Rose Peploe said: “We were honoured and hugely excited to deliver against such a bold, rich, transformational brief for so historic an institution. Its varied spaces and facilities have a multitude of purposes, atmospheres and intents, all of which are vital to the museum as a whole.

“Our interior scheme began with research into the museum’s past whilst focusing on the aspiration of creating a museum where ‘everybody is welcome’, representing and encouraging all cultures and generations to spend quality time within the museum.

“We curated a selection of rich colours and authentic materials inspired from spaces around the world, aiming to reimagine how the museum may once have looked, as an ode to the past, whilst representing the museum and its values as they stand today.

“Artistry House Interiors partnered with Little Greene Paints to curate the colour palette for the museum, featuring bold, yet warm tones such as Goblin, Nether Red and Cordoba.

“The material DNA was inspired by the museum’s natural sciences and human cultures. Honest and authentic materials such as natural stones, brass and solid oak, were used throughout the project, paying particular focus on their credentials, ensuring they were ethically and sustainably sourced.

“We balanced the traditional architecture with the use of high quality modern furniture, using conscious designers including HAY, Menu, Howe and Arper.

“Of utmost importance for us was to create a visual through-line across these spaces, showcasing high impact objects, mindful of the unique functionality of each space, visitor experience and visitor flow and embodying a commitment to sustainable and inclusive design.”

Manchester Museum entrance area — Artistry House Interiors partnered with Little Greene Paints to curate the colour palette for the museum

A sister company of award-winning creative agency Wash Studio, Artistry House Interiors is based at The Artistry House, which provides a base for a range of collaborating creative companies from its three-storey artistic hub in Winckley Square.

A Manchester Museum spokesperson said: “Transforming a historic building with such a large collection and renewing our civic mission was a complex project.

“The galleries and facilities that you will now find across the museum have been co-curated and co-designed and displays include new and diverse perspectives.

“The museum was born of civic spirit, curiosity and ambition at the height of British colonial rule, and how we acknowledge, interrogate and address this complex history is critical and urgent work.

“We are rethinking restitution and building new relationships with communities across the world and with those most intimately connected to our collections, and we required a design partner that understood and would help us reflect this.”