As the photo shows Caunton have started work on the new landmark museum for Liverpool. Located at Pierhead, right on the Mersey waterfront –a World Heritage Site too- and next door to the Liver Building, the Museum is set to become an icon for this great city.

Caunton are erecting some 2000te of structural steelwork, working first off, and away from, massive concrete cores, as the photo shows.

Planning permission was granted back in 2005 and it is only now that the structure is beginning to take shape. The new museum is to take over from the existing Museum of Liverpool Life, which has been attracting an increasing number of visitors for ten years. Client New Museums of Liverpool, NML, believe this popular museum is too small to house and display its huge urban history collections satisfactorily. By building the new landmark museum, Liverpool will follow in the footsteps of previous European Capitals of Culture, Graz and Cork, which both had iconic buildings built to coincide with the title.

The striking building has been designed by Danish architects 3XN, and the engineer is Buro Happold –themselves no strangers to iconic buildings –the Dome, Emirates Stadium, Ascot Racecourse for example. Contractor for this complex project is the Pihl-Galliford Try Joint Venture. Pihl is a Danish contractor with a world-wide reputation , and who are now most active in the UK. Galliford Try is a contractor with whom Caunton have a long history of successful collaboration.


Hold the Architects Journal front page! for the next prize winning building, we say!!