Geological Museum

The Geological Museum stands in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, next to the Natural History Museum on Exhibition Road. Built in 1935, it was designed by Sir Richard Allison and John Hatton Markham for the Office of Works. The building once housed the World Economic Conference in 1933 before becoming a museum of geology. It began in 1837 as the Museum of Economic Geology in Craig’s Court, Whitehall, founded by Henry de la Beche. The museum moved again in 1851 to a Pennethorne-designed building on Piccadilly and Jermyn Street, where it included a lecture theatre and laboratories. The museum became famous for its dioramas that explained geology and mining techniques. In 1971, designer James Gardner created *The Story of the Earth*, praised worldwide for its rock face cast from Scotland and interactive models. A planetarium, volcano model and earthquake machine drew visitors. Later, Giles Velarde led a team that produced exhibitions like *British Fossils* and *Treasures of the Earth*, which used computers alongside artefacts. *Treasures of the Earth* was the first gallery to integrate digital displays with physical objects. Today, the former Geological Museum forms the Red Zone of the Natural History Museum. Its central hall was transformed in 1996 with an escalator rising eleven metres through a rotating globe. The atrium walls show sand-blasted slate panels of stars and planets. A stegosaurus skeleton now stands in the atrium, and a human evolution gallery opened in 2015. The link between the two buildings was improved in 1998, making the space easier to explore.