The British Museum is to commission Richard Rogers to design a new exhibition and conservation centre. Costing over ￡50m, the building should be completed in 2011. It will be located in the northwest section of the museum site, and the trustees are keen on an environmentally-sound “green” contemporary building. Ever since the opening of the Great Court in 2000, it has been clear that the museum needs a larger area for temporary exhibitions. The Hotung Gallery, in the court, is a similar size to the other display space, room 5. Both are too small for major shows attracting large visitor numbers, and hence the decision to use the round reading room for “China’s Terracotta Army” (opening on 13 September). The newly planned exhibition space in the northwest part of the site should have an area of 1,000 sq. m, or double each of the two existing galleries. It may also be possible to provide direct access to Montague Place, enabling shows to remain open for longer hours than the main museum. The other part of the new building will be a conservation centre, to replace existing studios and laboratories in the east of the museum’s site. It is also expected to provide some storage space and will have facilities for handling and packing loans. The conservation centre is partly a replacement for the proposed study centre, which was to have been established in a former postal sorting office close to the museum. This plan was dropped in 2003, for financial reasons. This month the museum is expected to announce that Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners (the new name for the Richard Rogers Partnership) has been appointed to develop plans for the exhibition and conservation centre. Costs are not yet known, and may be partly dependent on the area of storage space, but they could well exceed ￡50m. The area where the new project will be sited is in the north-west corner of the museum, behind existing buildings which front Montague Place. It will be centred around the area currently occupied by the former British Library bindery, an 1860s building which is now used for offices. Last month three newly refurbished galleries were reopened, devoted to ancient Iran, prehistoric Europe and the Middle East (rooms 49-52). The next rooms to be refurbished will be those on medieval Europe and clocks.