National Maritime Museum-Sammy Ofer Wing

Set within the heart of the Greenwich World Heritage Site, the Sammy Ofer Wing links space and time. Providing new visitor routes and stitching together previously independent historic elements. The new entrance literally turns the Museum back to front, establishing a stronger relationship with its neighbour, Greenwich Park, a relationship previously denied by level changes, railings and administrative boundaries. This landscape led solution manipulates the historic fabric to achieve greater permeability, connectivity and accessibility between the complex of historic buildings and landscapes. The landscape sweeps down from the park levels to the entrance set 2 metres lower. The building provides access to the galleries at its lower level and to a raised viewing platform above. Planes of lawn and paving descend to the doorways while mature clipped hornbeam hedges flank elevations of extended ramps. When viewed east-west the scheme has ample hard surfaces accommodating major pedestrian flows but when seen from the park it presents a greener aspect, the layered hedges continuing the parkland character up to the Museum's walls.The focal points are two water features, a 160 metre rill which runs the length of the boundary and the water steps, three broad sheets of shallow water that descend to the main entrance doors. These playful features draw on maritime references evoking breaker like qualities, a magnet for children of all ages from the day of opening. Their primary role is to draw people in, encouraging the visitor to follow them from the boundary to the entrance.