London’s Natural History Museum will soon have a slew of a new features, carried out by architects at Niall McLaughlin Architects and landscapers Kim Wilkie. With the planning permission granted this year, the museum is currently in the fundraising stage and aims to complete the project by 2020. The introductions will enhance the museum’s access, grounds and wildlife garden starting with the entrance, the Square, stretching onto the Eastern Grounds. The Eastern Grounds will feature a new bronze cast of a diplodocus as well as a geological timeline of the Earth’s evolution complete with intricate landscaping. The bronze cast is not the same as the ‘Dippy the Diplodocus’ signature that currently sits in the Museum’s central hall — it will leave the museum in 2017 to go on a UK tour in 2018. The Western Grounds will see the Wildlife Garden double in size and three quarters of its current iteration set amidst the urban greenery. While London’s Museum of Natural History opened its doors to the public in April 1881, its origins run back a century prior to that.
