Geological Museum
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The Geological Museum (originally The Museum of Practical Geology, started in 1835 and therefore one of the oldest single science museums in the world) transferred from Jermyn Street to Exhibition Road, South Kensington in 1935 in a building designed by Sir Richard Allison and John Hatton Markham of the Office of Works.
When it was re-opened in 1935 it became well known for the many dioramas (three-dimensional paintings) used to interpret geology and one or two mining techniques. (These have largely been dismantled since the Natural History Museum took over the Museum in 1985.)
In 1965, the museum had been merged with the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Overseas Geological Surveys, under the name Institute of Geological Sciences.
In 1971 the Museum employed the late designer James Gardiner to design and produce The Story of the Earth, which was acknowledged as a significant breakthrough in science museum design and critically acclaimed and imitated worldwide. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II and became well known for the huge reproduction of a rock face, cast from site in Scotland, and for its planetarium, active volcano model and earthquake machine.
Between 1971 and 1974 the museum formed its own award-winning design team which, working closely with the scientists and technicians, produced a series of temporary and permanent exhibitions starting with the re-presentation of the gem collection, then with a design team led by Giles Velarde (Head of Exhibition Design from 1974–1988), produced Early Days of Geology in Britain, Black Gold, Britain Before Man, Journey to the Planets, British Fossils, Pebbles, Treasures of the Earth and finally British Offshore Oil and Gas, which opened in 1988.
Treasures of the Earth was the first major museum gallery in the world to integrate computers presenting images and text adjacent to artefacts as part of the information process within the exhibition. The central feature film, Liquid Assets, in the Oil and Gas exhibition was shot and viewed vertically from a circular gallery and won a major award from the IVCA in 1989.
Following the relocation of the British Geological Survey's academic activities to Keyworth, the museum was transferred from the custody of the Natural Environment Research Council to the newly independent Natural History Museum. Although an administrative merger with the NHM had been effected by 1988 from which time the former Geological Museum was promoted as the The Earth Galleries of the NHM, it was not until 1998 that the previously difficult to find corridor between the two museum buildings was replaced by a new link gallery.
Surveys had shown that relatively few visitors navigated the Geological Museum's monumental staircase to the top floors. The re-ordering of the galleries means that visitors are now encouraged to start their visit at the top of the building.
This was achieved in 1996 by a design by Neal Potter[1]including the installation of a large escalator (rising eleven metres at a 30° slope)in the former Central Hall of the museum - renamed Visions of Earth. The escalator ascends continuously over two storeys and passes through a boldy-lit model globe. The previously open-sided balconies of the atrium space are now solid walls lined with slabs of recycled slate. These are sand-blasted to show the major stars in the night sky and the planets in the solar system. When first opened, the globe rotated around the escalator, with dramatic sound effects based on Jimi Hendrix's "Third Rock from the Sun", attempting to give an impression of the flux in the core of the Earth.
Potter was influenced in his design by the "Story of the Earth" by James Gardiner where the position of the Earth in Space was the first exhibit (model) in Gardiner's narrative.Initially Potter only intended the plates on the globe to shuffle and grind on each other but engineer Peter Kemp worked out how to revolve the 10 tonne globe around the escalator. The globe was built by a contractor called Techfab.
 The Atrium after conversion |
 Designs for the Atrium by Neal Potter 1996 |
 Designs for the Atrium by Neal Potter 1996 |
 Design for Earth Sciences and religion exhibit. Neal Potter 1996 |
 Design for "Man looks back" exhibit. Neal Potter 1996 |
 Spinning globe 1996. |
The re-presentation was criticised by some academic earth scientists for placing too much emphasis on entertainment, and allegedly turning the museum into a theme park. But the new design was effective in trebling visitor numbers to the exhibitions in the building to 1.8 million in 1997. As the Museums Association's journal Museum Practice, reported in 2007 “.....the contrast between galleries just before and just after Potter’s arrival (at the Natural History Museum) is like switching over from a television programme made for schools to a big-screen epic, choreographed by Busby Berkeley.”
However, the globe has not rotated for some years. There were suggestions that it gave some visitors vertigo, but the main reason was a dispute with the builder of the globe (who had not followed their own construction drawings) who went into receivership soon after the Earth Galleries opened.
