The Building - National Waterfront Museum

The museum is housed in a magnificent building that elegantly combines old and new architecture. There are three elements to the building: a former dockside warehouse, originally built in 1901, a suite of new exhibition galleries, a little to the north of the warehouse, facing Oystermouth Road, and a central foyer that connects the two main buildings. The latter two structures were designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects and built between 2002 and 2004.

Much care has been taken by the Architects to complement the historic warehouse through materials, structure and overall design. The alignment of the new exhibition galleries follows the curve of a railway marshalling yard that originally serviced the dockside warehouse. The connecting structure between old and new buildings is strictly aligned on a direct route from the centre of Swansea, along Princess Way to the north of Oystermouth Road, to the dock and sea. In many ways it feels as if a covered "street" has been built through the old and new buildings.

The ground between the old and new buildings has been used to create a courtyard garden. Between the new building and Oystermouth Road is the museum park. This has been designed to complement the museum and has flower beds, paths and rows of trees aligned to echo the railway goods yard and station that occupied the site until the 1960s