London's Imperial War Museum (IWM) has marked the centenary of World War One with the reopening of its museum following the completion of the first phase of a larger £40m (US$68.3m, €50.5m) revamp of the entire facility.

Opening to the public tomorrow (19 July), the first phase of the IWM's refurbishment was made possible with £6.5m (US$11.1m, €8.2m) in funding form the Heritage Lottery Fund (HFL) and £5m (US$8.5m, €6.3m) from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as well as other public and private donations.

Foster + Partners (F+P) has been working on the Imperial War Museum (IWM) for the last four years as part of a wider redevelopment and masterplan of the entire site. Housed in the old, Grade II listed Bethlem Hospital and set in landscaped parkland, IWM was formed during World War One as a place future generations could come to understand the sacrifices that were made as a result of war.

The new atrium by F+P and the IWM’s World War Galleries were officially opened by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday (17 July). The atrium houses some of the museum’s largest exhibits, including two classic planes, a GRI Harrier Jet used in Afghanistan and Kosovo in addition to a Mark One Spitfire with a rich battle-ridden history.

The first phase the IWM’s development has been finished in time to coincide with the centenary of the start of World War One. The subsequent phases of the museum’s redevelopment are planned to coincide with other important commemoration dates.

Michael Jones, a senior partner at F+P, speaking exclusively to Attractions Management, commented that “there are lots of milestones coming and we hope to pin those future phases to those dates, so there will hopefully be a series of big projects that commemorate these different milestones, that is the objective.”

Architecturally, the museum still has several phases to go before it’s envisaged masterplan is complete. Jones commented that the current staircase visitors use when entering the ground floor of the exhibition are temporary, with the entrance planed to eventually be on the ground floor, offering views out to the park and surrounding landscape, which includes IWM’s signature piece – the two battleship guns at the front of the museum.

The museum's respective exhibitions are now placed in a chronological order and arranged in clusters. F+P’s new four-storey staircase is a prominent feature in the atrium, allowing access to all of the different galleries, starting on the ground floor with the new first world war exhibit and working up to contemporary war exhibits. Each is now able to flow and blend with one another, using history as an overarching narrative.

Nigel Steel, principal historian at IWM, introduced the layout of the new space – which has previously been somewhat disjointed – as aiming, “not simply to tell the story of conflict over the past hundred years… but [to provide] a series of highlights, of snapshots, of insights into the vast subject of global conflict since 1914.”

Steel likened the experience of the new atrium space and it’s poignant collection to “turning the pages of a family photo album… each is a separate episode, but together they form a simple story, like clusters, there is an internal dynamic between them, created by their arrangement and through the memories and associations they inspire.”

Drawing on IWM’s First World War collections, the richest and most comprehensive in the world, visitors will see over 1,300 objects on display, many of which have never been seen before. They range from weapons, uniforms and equipment to diaries and letters, keepsakes and trinkets, photographs, film and art.