SS Great Britain Experience, Bristol Dockyards
20 July 2026
Design: Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) with Alec French Architects
Location: Bristol Dockyards, England, UK
● Home of Brunel’s iconic ship – the SS Great Britain – to reopen new museum this summer at Bristol Dockyards
● Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, SS Great Britain is the world’s first ocean-going, metal-hulled propeller-driven ship
● The SS Great Britain Trust has worked with Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) to redevelop the new museum’s visitor experience
● New ‘SS Great Britain Experience’ explores the history of SS Great Britain through people-centred stories relevant to 21st-century audiences
photo : Adam Gasson & SS Great Britain Trust
Project Background and Brief
The SS Great Britain Trust is a Bristol-based education charity that cares for Brunel’s SS Great Britain and the National Brunel collection. The Trust has a particular focus on inspiring people – through the legacy of Brunel – with contemporary science, creativity and engineering, to help them to understand the world today and their own potential within it.
The SS Great Britain Experience celebrates the people behind the ship’s remarkable story, from the engineers and shipbuilders who created it, to the sailors and passengers who travelled aboard. Using newly discovered material, the Experience reveals the ship’s global significance and the human stories at its heart.
Five years of community research have brought to light previously untold histories, from the ship’s construction in 1840s Bristol to voyages to New York, Australia, India and San Francisco. Interactive exhibits, life-size digital recreations, historic and modern art, and remarkable artefacts carried at sea over 150 years ago bring the story vividly to life.
photograph : Andrew Lee
Co-Designing with Communities
Community integration shaped the work from the ground up. Before RAA joined the project, the Trust had already established a Community Advisory and Research Group of communities from across Bristol. The Group conducted research to uncover stories of people who travelled or worked on the ship, including those with whom they share heritage – and these stories now form a core part of the museum’s narrative. These include artwork from First Nations artist Fiona Clarke about the story of the original First Nations cricket team, its relationship with the SS Great Britain, and her heritage and ancestors.
Throughout the design process, RAA maintained ongoing check-ins with the Group to ensure that these stories were being communicated accurately and that research, discoveries and stories were well represented across the narrative and in media installations.
In several instances, RAA’s design team created graphics and showcases for content that does not yet exist – space is held deliberately open for objects and stories still emerging from community engagement work in progress. This deliberate move places co-creation at the heart of the process and will inform future community engagement across the wider site masterplan.
photo : Andrew Lee
Design Concept
RAA’s concept – ‘Reimagining the Wonder’ – took as its starting point the awe felt by 19th-century witnesses encountering SS Great Britain for the
first time. Twin themes of ‘Adaptation’ and ‘Change’ served as the conceptual basis of RAA’s narratively-driven design, reflecting how the ship evolved across its working life.
Working within an existing triple-height industrial building, RAA’s design team developed a simple but effective modular timber framework to hold stories, objects and interpretation. Designed to complement the industrial architecture rather than conceal it, the timber frame appears in varied finishes – raw, stained and sprayed – to reflect the ship’s changing character over time. Powder-coated metal provides structural integrity to the frame while reinforcing the exposed, industrial aesthetic of its setting.
Colours are inspired by mass-produced aniline dyes of the Victorian era, reinterpreted through a contemporary lens. Soft fabrics evoke the ship’s early luxury interiors and provide acoustic softening in key areas.
Throughout, the design keeps sightlines open and the building legible. The entire system is modular and designed for future updates by the museum’s team, allowing interpretation and object displays to evolve as research develops and community engagement generates new content.
image : Max McClure & SS Great Britain Trust
Visitor Journey
The visitor journey unfolds chronologically through the ship’s working life, anchored throughout by life-size, 1:1 scale encounters with historical and contemporary figures including: a Bristol shipbuilder, a Crimean general, a young emigrant to Australia, a Jamaican chef and a First Nations artist. The museum is designed so that its entire story can be grasped through these encounters alone, regardless of how deeply a visitor engages with surrounding content.
Upon entering, visitors encounter a bold introduction – ‘The Ship that Changed the World’ – contextualising the SS Great Britain’s revolutionary significance through large-scale graphics and a layered evolution of the ship’s timeline.
From there, visitors move through a series of thematic galleries:
● Bristol, where the ship was conceived and built;
● Liverpool, its home port, evoked through an immersive sensory tunnel of archival imagery and harbour soundscapes;
● New York, where the ship helped pioneer the transatlantic luxury liner route;
● Crimea and India, exploring its role as a troopship in service of the British Empire;
● Australia, tracing the emigrant journeys that defined most of the ship’s working life and their lasting impact on First Nations communities;
● A Passenger Library inviting visitors to explore a global database of the thousands of people who travelled on board; and finally
● San Francisco, documenting the ship’s later life as a cargo vessel before its abandonment in the Falkland Islands.
photograph : Adam Gasson & SS Great Britain Trust
Visitors exit directly onto the ship. Primed by everything they have encountered in the exhibition, SS Great Britain is revealed in a new light, brimming with the stories of those who encountered the ship past and present.
Kate Rambridge Project Manager, Interpretation & Experience, Bristol Dockyards, said:
“We have really valued the relationship with RAA throughout this project. From the outset, they committed to a new approach which values the experience and perspective of community participants as much as the expertise of collection experts and historians, and balances these different inputs with such intelligence. We’ve asked them for patience and involvement as well as design leadership, and they have been our trusted partners throughout the project. It’s been exciting to share the curiosity, the creative process, and the sense of mission with this outstanding team.
picture : Andrew Lee
John Blanchard Principal & Director, London, said:
“Working on this project has been a deeply inspiring journey for the entire team at RAA made possible by a fantastic client, an incredible collection, and the community voices involved. Through a process of careful co-creation and engagement with both the Trust and the Community Advisory and Research Group, we have been able to centre diverse, real-world narratives at the very heart of the exhibition. We are incredibly proud to have played a part in ‘reimagining the wonder’ of this historic site. The SS Great Britain was awe-inspiring to those who first witnessed it in the 19th century, and it remains just as awe-inspiring today. Our hope is that this new exhibition continues to spark that same sense of awe, wonder and curiosity for every visitor who steps through its doors.”
Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) plan, design and produce award-winning museums, exhibitions and visitor centres worldwide. Their subjects range from natural history and the physical sciences, to cultural, social and corporate history, to sports and the fine arts, with more than 1,000 commissions in the company portfolio.
Founded in 1978, RAA has expanded to become a global group with studios in New York, London, Berlin and Beijing. The SS Great Britain exhibition has been designed by RAA’s London studio, established in 2000. For more information, see www.raai.com
SS Great Britain Experience, Bristol Dockyards, England – Building Information
Project Team:
RAA was the Lead Consultant responsible for Exhibition Design and Build (including Interpretation Planning, Concept Design and Development, Spatial Design, Graphic Design and Production, Content Development, Media Production and Exhibition Fabrication and Installation).
The full team included:
Architecture: Alec French Architects
First Nations Artist: Fiona Clarke
Exhibition Build: Workhaus
Lighting Design: Record Lighting
AV Hardware: The Story Engineers
Media Design & Production: Dot Crew
Graphics Production: Quarmby Colour
Photography: Andrew Lee
photo : Andrew Lee
Bristol Dockyards
Bristol Dockyards is the home of ideas that changed the world. A thriving harbourside destination, we exist to conserve the world’s first great ocean liner, the SS Great Britain, the Brunel Institute’s world-class maritime collection and the historic dockyard itself. Bringing the radical spirit of Brunel and Bristol to life through all-year-round cultural programming, education and engagement work and experiences that inspire new generations to change their world.
Bristol Dockyards is operated by SS Great Britain Trust, Charity no: 262158.
Instagram: @bristoldockyards
SS Great Britain Experience, Bristol Dockyards Building, southwest England images / information received 200726
Location: Bristol, south west England, United Kingdom
Bristol Architecture
Bristol Architecture Design – chronological list
Bristol Architectural Design
Brabazon public square, former Filton Airfield, South Gloucestershire, Southwest England, UK
Landscape Design: Grant Associates
image courtesy of YTL Developments
Radical Retrofit Office Building, Bristol, England
Design: Sheppard Robson
image : NJY studio
+++
English Building Designs
English Architecture – recent architectural selection below:
Comments / photos for the SS Great Britain Experience, Bristol Dockyards building, southwest England design by Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) with Alec French Architects page welcome.
