At London Museum, follow the old market from street to railway

The route into the new London Museum starts with an old street. From there, visitors will be able to cross a market hall and descend to galleries beside a working railway. Those three moves explain the Smithfield conversion better than a front elevation alone. The architects have turned a building designed around the movement of goods into a place for people to pass through, gather and look back at how the city worked.

Smithfield’s former General Market in 2007, before its conversion for London Museum. The red-brick street frontage and canopy are visible in this archival photograph. JamesK1987 / Wikimedia Commons. Creator-dedicated public domain. Original photograph unchanged. Original photograph and rights record.

Start with the route through the building

London Museum says the first phase will open on 28 November in the former General Market. The museum credits Stanton Williams and Asif Khan with the design, working with conservation architects Julian Harrap. It calls the covered former street at the main entrance Real Time, the central gathering space under the restored dome Our Time, and the galleries below ground Past Time. Opening announcement · Architects and conservation team.

The middle space is where the change of use becomes easiest to understand. A high, open room that once made trading possible is set to hold museum installations and events. Giving it a social job preserves an experience that is hard to put in a display case: the ability to see across a market-sized room and decide where to go next. That is the design question to take on a first visit. Does the central room feel like somewhere to pause as well as a route to an exhibit?

Follow the traces of work

The General Market opened in 1883 to a design by Sir Horace Jones. The museum’s history explains how Phoenix columns supported a broad open hall and how laminated wood was used for the roof to help keep the interior cool. That older engineering puts the conversion in context. Large rooms, cool interiors and routes for moving goods were working requirements. The new programme gives the hall a different use while letting readers start with those original requirements. Museum history of Smithfield.

The railway makes the change unusually easy to picture. Freight trains once served the market below ground. The museum says its subterranean galleries sit beside a live line and that a viewing window in the former salt store will face passing Thameslink trains. The exhibition designers at Atelier Brückner identify the line as part of the gallery’s industrial story. The view turns a connection between transport and trade into something a visitor can look for from the building itself. Museum building guide · Exhibition design record.

Plan around the two opening phases

The permanent General Market galleries are the November opening. The museum gives 2028 for the neighbouring Poultry Market, where it plans temporary exhibitions, a learning centre and collection storage. For the first phase, its visit page says general admission is free and recommends booking ahead, particularly in the opening weeks. Check the museum’s current entry details and arrival route if you are travelling to London for the opening. Plan a visit · The two market buildings.

A way to read a reused building anywhere

For a design team looking at a former market or station in Lagos, Accra or London, try drawing two routes on the same sketch. Follow the people and goods the building was made to serve, then follow the people who will use it next. Mark the places where both routes meet and where the new use needs a different entrance or somewhere to stop. Smithfield offers a concrete example of what the exercise can uncover: the former street, a shared hall and the connection to the railway.

PING compared London Museum’s June opening announcement, its building and visitor pages, and Atelier Brückner’s exhibition plan. Wallpaper*’s 6 November profile of Asif Khan prompted this desk report ahead of opening. The cover records the actual site in 2007. For a related PING piece on reading the working details of a public design, see The Pangolin Shield at Strand Aldwych.