Mecanoo has shared the news of its completed transformation of the Perth Museum in central Scotland.

The three-year construction yields 37,700 square feet worth of new public space inside of the Edwardian-style former City Hall that serviced the community from 1914 on. A specially carved Vennels-inspired intervention connects the two separate halls, framed by two new portals made from Black Isle timber and finished with a bronze casing. 

Visitors will be welcomed into the brightly-lit new Main Hall archives space by a dramatic oak box container for the mythical returned Scottish Stone of Destiny. The adjacent Lesser Hall is thereafter recreated as a new communal space with larger windows and replete with a café and events venue.

This creates new panoramic views of the St. Johns Kirk church outside. Artifacts taken from the Jacobite period are on display within, including the silver broadsword used by Bonnie Prince Charles during his ill-fated attempt to regain the crown in August of 1745. 

Mecanoo has hailed this £27 million (USD $34 million) redevelopment as both a follow-up to their successful transformation of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library in New York City and the central catalyst for the cultural regeneration of Perth (pop. 43,000).

Reviewing it for The Guardian recently, critic Rowan Moore says: "They have made the somewhat forbidding old building, a last gasp of Edwardian baroque, more permeable than it was. [...] To complete the project on time and on budget, as I am told has happened, should be applauded, but there’s a lack of overall coherence that comes from the ways that oak and bronze are combined with less considered and high-spec finishes."

Next up, the firm will complete work on a new energy-positive brick residential project in Amsterdam in 2025.