First look at National Railway Museum's Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery

Railways, locomotion and simple engineering concepts hold a special place in children’s imagination.

Designed by De Matos Ryan, Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery at the National Railway Museum in York will inspire future generations of engineers and inventors.

Hands-on experimentation and creative exploration will excite, inspire and challenge young minds, bringing awareness to sustainability and energy.

The gallery’s 18 interactive exhibits showcase different engineering and railway concepts, encouraging visitors to think like engineers and develop skills as they design, build and test in an exciting, permissive and playful manner.

The ‘Feel the Force’ exhibit, for example, explores design streamlining through physically experiencing aerodynamics. The engaging and intuitive open-plan workshop aims to stimulate social interaction and is intended to bring together existing and new audiences. The space appeals to a cross-generational audience but focuses on captivating the minds of 7–14-year-olds.

To create the exhibits, a process of testing and prototyping involved more than 1,300 people, including experts within the rail industry, education, local community groups and members of the public.

With accessibility at the core of the design, De Matos Ryan engaged with specialists to ensure that the gallery is welcoming to all. The design scheme explores different forms of ‘Motion’ evoked by railway engineering, particularly the perception of relative motion in relation to static volumes, surfaces, textures and light.

Sited in the 1,500m2 former locomotive repair workshop, the scheme draws inspiration from its layered history and authentic, raw interior and stitches new and old building fabric together. A family of new ‘engineering’ timber structures, reminiscent of iconic locomotive fragments, act as screening and layering devices to define zones and create areas of intimacy within the largely open-plan gallery.

Housing the Weston Showspace and the Wallace Learning Space, the shape and construction of the structures communicates and celebrates the creative process and language of core railway engineering principles, taking inspiration from key exhibits and concepts throughout the museum. The Wallace Learning Space, for example, draws inspiration from the Ellerman Lines steam locomotive to create a surreal and engaging play on scale where visitors metaphorically transform into the size of a steam drop.

A sustainably sourced timber lining skirts the perimeter of the space to reduce the gallery’s imposing scale and add a sense of warmth and calm against which the interactives are set.

The lining gently evolves to become work benches, seating areas, storage cupboards and viewing portals. Imperfections and historical wear and tear, such as the concrete floor, are exposed and celebrated.

The memory, rawness and energy of the building’s existing use has been maintained where possible. Larger-scale permanent structures, such as the wheel drop, pits and crane, have been re-activated to form the framework and supporting elements for new content.

De Matos Ryan worked collaboratively with graphic designers Lucienne Roberts +. The gallery will include two unique art installations by artists Pippa Hale and Steve Messam.