Designing for culture and climate:Balancing resilience, electrification and whole life carbon in museums.

by Alan Stuart, Associate Director, and Michela Mangiarotti, Associate Director

Museums and galleries are well placed to lift the bar on decarbonisation. As consultants, we work closely to optimise energy use and maintain precise collection environments while reducing operational and embodied carbon.

How should cultural institutions balance resilience and decarbonisation in their energy choices?
Decarbonisation for cultural institutions isn’t just about replacing old fossil fuel boilers with shiny new heat pumps. It’s about resilience, reliability, and reputation. Many cultural buildings rely on highly controlled internal climates to protect priceless collections — and any failure carries enormous consequences.

This makes them natural candidates for district energy systems, on-site renewables, and electrification. But these solutions only succeed when engineered with curatorial needs front of mind. For the award-winning Burrell Collection, we designed a system that combined low-carbon performance with the precision required for conservation. The result was infrastructure that quietly protected heritage while dramatically cutting operational carbon emissions.

We don’t see decarbonisation as simply a technical challenge. It is a cultural responsibility. Institutions that embrace it demonstrate leadership to their visitors and their peers. They show that climate action can coexist with conservation at the highest level and help secure the future protection of these amazing collections.

The shift to new energy systems is not just about engineering; it is about values.

Whole life-cycle carbon for new build museums
There’s a paradox at the heart of new museums. They are designed to last centuries yet built in a world that must decarbonise immediately. How do we reconcile the permanence cultural institutions require with the urgency of the climate crisis?

We’ve been thinking about this a lot lately at Atelier Ten and whole life-cycle carbon assessment is our best answer. Instead of focusing solely on operational energy, we interrogate every material, every system, every decision — measuring upfront emissions and long-term savings. We work with design teams to weigh the carbon cost of structural systems against the value of durability, maintenance, and adaptability, not just to inform procurement, but often to reframe the brief itself.

For museums, the stakes are higher than most. Curatorial environments demand robust structures, precise environmental control, and specialist materials. But this cannot be an excuse for excess. With rigorous analysis, early design integration, and a clear carbon benchmark, we can build institutions that are both climate leaders and cultural icons.

A museum must not only house culture; it must embody stewardship of resources.