National Museums Liverpool (NML) has named Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios as the replacement for Adjaye Associates on the design team for the new International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum.

The opportunity to replace Adjaye on the project came after the museum cut ties with his firm last summer following the revelation of sexual misconduct allegations in the Financial Times that preceded a string of high-profile project cancellations in the United States, the UK, and Saudi Arabia.

The NML redevelopment, which was first announced in 2021, has since increased in cost to £58 million (or about $73.5 million USD). Work will now begin once more from the RIBA Plan of Work scale's stage 3 (Spatial Coordination) through to the completion stage 7. The NML says this will entail adding an entirely new entrance inside the Martin Luther King Jr. building and additional major renovations to the site’s Hartley Pavilion.

Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which had been retained originally to design exhibition spaces inside the remade new museum, will remain on to continue its work under the stewardship of FCBStudios. Professors Ilze Wolff and Ola Uduku and Ph.D. candidate Kudzai Matsvai of the University of Liverpool School of Architecture have also been added to the project in a consultant capacity.

In a statement, FCBStudios partner and the project's lead designer, Kossy Nnachetta, said: “We understand that there is a huge responsibility to help create a platform to tell this story, long whispered, yet still awaiting the space to fully express itself; and all the potent, deep-seated emotions it can elicit. We hope to help create something bold and yet beautiful. The result of ‘many hands’ working together with the museums and communities in Liverpool.”

"We are delighted they're keen to embrace this as a co-production project which we feel will create something truly ground-breaking,” NML director Laura Pye added.

Founded in 1978, the firm was included in the most recent Stirling Prize, an honor it first took home in 2008 for the co-design (along with Alison Brooks Architects) of the Accordia housing block in Cambridge.

FCBStudios also worked with the NML on a ten-year Liverpool master plan that was completed in 2019. As Building Design first reported in September, the new redevelopment contract is worth about £1.1 million ($1.36 million). No design details were presented with the announcement. The NML says they expect the project to be completed by the beginning of 2029.