The Windermere Jetty Museum was recently shortlisted for the 2021 RIBA Stirling Prize, having already won an RIBA National Award and the RIBA North West Building of the Year Award. The museum is unified and defined by facades and oversailing roofs clad in Nordic Brown pre-oxidised copper, developing naturally over time and responding to the unique lakeside context – as architects Carmody Groarke explain.

Rather than a singular huge building, a granular ensemble of smaller buildings that are square on plan creates a more fitting scale with its context. The museum therefore has a strong topographical relationship with the land and the water. The wet dock forms the centre-piece of the museum and brings the lake into the heart of the experience to present the collection at water level. Other buildings making up the visitor route including: main entrance, conservation galleries, interpretation, education and cafe, all clustered around the wet dock but elevated on a podium away from the risk of floodwaters. A conservation workshop is a standalone building placed closer to the water level on the working boatyard.

The architectural language of the museum is characterised by the vernacular typology of the roof, taking reference from the pronounced overhanging eaves of ‘Broadleys’, C.F.A. Voysey’s grand house on Windermere, as well as more archetypal agricultural and industrial buildings of the Lake District. The building forms are somehow familiar, but made special by the overhanging canopies which extend the inside spaces of the building with all-weather shelter into the landscape. Internally, each individual building is organised with a large principal room centrally orientated to face the lakeshore, with ancillary spaces and the external canopy spaces balancing each side of the symmetrical sectional composition.