To create the narrative masterplan, interpretation and all content for Aerospace Bristol, a new museum telling the history of flight in the United Kingdom.

The story centred on the archives, collections and extraordinary human stories of a single company at the forefront of the industry since 1906 and now a world leader in aerospace design.

Narrative Masterplanning | Research | Interpretation Planning | Content Development | Design Integration

From the start we knew we were dealing with one of the most remarkable archives in British industrial history, as well as meeting the actual people whose working lives it documents.

We also realised that the same three questions have driven the development of powered flight for 120 years:  How strong must it be?  How fast and far can it go? How much weight can it carry?

Taken together these two elements formed the core narrative for Aerospace Bristol.

From this foundation we developed the interpretive masterplan for the full museum from the first reconnaissance planes made of paper and wood through to Concorde and beyond, while keeping individual human stories at the centre of the experience.

We worked closely with the design teams to develop design concepts and integrate them with the narrative framework, ensuring that every space, every object and every media element was in service of the same coherent story.

The result is a museum that carries the full sweep of British aviation history while feeling intimate, specific and deeply human.

The Bristol Aero Collections represent an unbroken line from the earliest days of powered flight to the present frontier of aerospace technology, documented in extraordinary detail and held in the memories of people who were there for almost all of it.

Those people - engineers, designers, apprentices -   are themselves a form of archive that no document can replicate.  The interviews we conducted were among the most remarkable research experiences in TGA's thirty years of practice

This project also demonstrated something fundamental about narrative masterplanning at scale: The particular is always more compelling than the general.

The apprentice who became a pioneering engineer is more interesting than a broad history of aerospace innovation.

Starting from the specific and letting the universal emerge is always the right approach.

Client: Bristol Aero Collections Trust

TGA: Narrative Masterplanning, Research, Interpretation Planning, Content Development, Design Integration

Partners: Event Communications (Exhibition Design), Surface3 (Graphic Design)