After a six-month competition, architecture firms Stanton Williams and Asif Khan have been announced as the designers of the new Museum of London , which will move from its current location in the Barbican neighborhood to the nearby Smithfield General Market. Their 270,000-square-foot design offers the museum more than twice its current floor space, with notable elements being an monumental domed atrium, spiral escalators, and a sunken garden. “Stanton Williams and Asif Khan offered some really innovative thinking, and managed to combine a sensitivity to the heritage of the location with a keen awareness of the practicalities of delivering a really functional museum,” Evan Davis, chair of the jury, said in a statement. The site has been a market since the 12th century, and the current structure was built by Sir Horace Jones, designer of Tower Bridge , in the 1860s. With the new design, much of the original architecture will be preserved: The architects dug down into the ground to find more square footage. The new museum is scheduled to open in 2022.

Many galleries will be underground.

The museum will feature a sunken garden and other green space.