The Science Museum Wellcome Wing, London

London's Science Museum has this summer launched the most ambitious project in its 140-year history with a new £50 million extension featuring a key exhibition on life science. With funds from the country's national lottery and the medical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, the museum has built a new Wellcome wing to add to its unique 250-year-old collection of technology. The new wing aims to be the world's leading centre for contemporary and future science with plans for regular changes and updates. Most striking for visitors is the vast space in the new wing. The west end comprises an enormous deep blue glass wall that creates a pervasive twilight. Four cantilevered exhibition floors appear to float within the space and a 450-seat IMAX cinema with a seven-storey high screen shows science-based films. It's impossible on the exhibition floors not to be drawn to the edge to peer around the extraordinary space. The new wing has already won many plaudits from architectural commentators. Alongside the main life science exhibition 'Who am I?' are 'Digitopolis' and 'In Future' which feature the digital age and explore how decisions made on contemporary scientific issues may affect our lives. The other main exhibit 'Antenna' will display the very latest scientific news. 'Who am I?' presents current biomedical research grouped under a series of questions. The exhibition beckons with 'What makes you, you?' and kicks off with details of seven volunteers who reveal their social history which is put alongside their biological one. A set of 10 large caterpillar-like 'pods' with lots of interactive features (see right) address topics such as 'consciousness', 'language', 'learning', 'gender', and 'emotions'. But the core of the exhibit features the more traditional format of glass cabinets stuffed with biological memorabilia and information. Anyone who reminisces about the slog of DNA sequencing in the early days of the 1970s will find all the paraphernalia here, including even a Bunsen burner, alongside state-of-the art automatic sequencing machines. The exhibition also aims for new levels of public interaction. A number of research teams will invite visitors to partake in research programmes. The exhibition also puts human attributes into a wider biological context, flagging up the achievements of other species. It is also sanguine but cautious about what biological knowledge might achieve in the future. The new wing also conspicuously draws science and art together with work displayed by a number of contemporary artists. The …