The World’s Best Kept Secret

The year is 1941 and the world is in the throes of war. Tucked away in rural England are a series of unassuming wooden huts, dotted across the grounds of a Victorian mansion, where history is in the making. This is Bletchley Park: the top-secret home of codebreakers and birthplace of modern computing.

Despite being at the heart of the Allied victory, the site was shrouded in secrecy and soon fell into disrepair. By the 1990s, the derelict site was threatened with demolition; the wooden huts were nearly beyond salvage.

Our task was to return the site to its former glory. Over the course of a decade, we worked with the Bletchley Park Trust to reveal its amazing stories. From a masterplan that established its new DNA as a visitor attraction to evocatively recreating the interiors of the painstakingly restored huts, we returned the site to life while laying the groundwork for future developments.

Today, the huts are dressed with coats on pegs, paperwork sprawled across desks and ashtrays full to the brim, as if the codebreakers had only just left. Walking around, you will catch whispers of conversations from long ago through soundscapes nestled around the grounds.

A multimedia guide takes you on a journey around a complicated campus while media installations tell stories about the extraordinary people behind the story. Interactives decipher complex concepts from codebreaking to computers and layered interpretation reveals the technological breakthroughs that changed the course of history.

Bletchley Park is now firmly ingrained in the public consciousness. Visitor traffic has increased, with a sharp rise in families and school groups. This success story has led to an ongoing partnership. Since masterplanning stage, we have continued to work with Bletchley Park to deliver a series of phased developments as the site grows and evolves.