The Science Museum has named its £65 million new building after Professor Stephen Hawking, as it unveiled the huge new home for precious scientific objects was unveiled for the first time.
The Hawking Building — a vast and innovative facility where Britain's Science Museum Group is caring for the nation’s science collection — has now officially opened, with the public invited to explore it on special tours.
Over 300,000 historic objects have been carefully studied, digitised and installed into the new purpose-built building at the Science and Innovation Park in Wiltshire, after being transported from their long-term home at London's Blythe House.
Blythe House — which housed these thousands of objects alongside those from a number of England's national museums including the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum — was sold off by the government in 2015, who pledged to support the creation of new storage centres.
The Science Museum began the mammoth task of relocating their collection in 2018, describing it as the world's biggest house move.
Hawking Building named after Professor Stephen Hawking
The new hi-tech centre has been named in honour of the lasting impact of Professor Stephen Hawking and his contribution to scientific research and public engagement.
Hawking had a long-standing relationship with the Science Museum Group, and as a child he drew inspiration from regular visits to the Science Museum in South Kensington.
Much later, he lent his communication devices for display, gave lectures, and debated Nobel Prize laureates in the museum, and even served as a guide for a day.
In 2021, the extraordinary contents of Hawking’s Cambridge University office were acquired for the nation by the Science Museum Group through the UK Government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme.
More than 1,000 objects — including his communication and mobility equipment — have since been studied and cared for in the Hawking Building, with staff and researchers uncovering the everyday and extraordinary stories within them.
The Science Museum Group Director Sir Ian Blatchford said "Stephen became a great friend to the Science Museum Group and this is a fitting way to celebrate that life-long relationship and our acquisition of the extraordinary items from his office that will inspire others for generations to come."
Tim Hawking, Stephen Hawking's son has said his family is "delighted that the Science Museum has chosen to name this magnificent new facility the Hawking Building."
He added that they were "so grateful" for the museum "taking such good care of the Stephen Hawking collection and ensuring that his work and legacy as a scientist, disability advocate and technology pioneer will be accessible to visitors to their museums nationwide."
The Hawking Building enables the Science Museum Group to better store, conserve, research and digitise their unique collection, while also improving the process of displaying items across the Group’s five museums, which include the National Railway Museum and the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.
Construction of the vast Hawking Building began in 2019 and was completed in just 18 months.
At 90m wide and 300m long, the facility is equivalent in size to 600 double decker buses. It features a spacious storage hall which contains 30 kilometres of shelving. The building also contains conservation laboratories, research areas and photography studios.
Hawking Building Tours now available
The first behind-the-scenes public tours of this building have now commenced, allowing visitors to get up close to the Science Museum Group’s world-class collection of objects from science, technology, engineering, and medicine.
Led by an expert guide, visitors on the guided tours will encounter incredible, world-changing objects in their new home and discover their stories, while also enjoying stunning views of this vast facility and seeing the museum's staff at work caring for the collection.
There's space for fifteen people per tour, with four tours a day.
Tours can now be booked for the first month, but from November, they will be halted for the winter months, something which bosses plan to do every year. They will restart in March for their annual run in the warmer months, until October annually. Tour dates for 2025 are now available to book.
Visitors will walk among hundreds of huge and awe-inspiring objects. These include a telescope carried into orbit by the US Space Shuttle Challenger, and a revolutionary Leyland Titan double-decker bus. There's even a NASA Flight Simulator chair used to train astronauts at the Johnson Space Center.
The UK's museums minister Sir Chris Bryant has hailed the new facility, saying that he's delighted it has "opened so that even more of the Science Museum Group's marvellous collection can educate and entertain, while offering the public a peek behind the curtain of how this great institution brings the world around us to life."