The sweeping air flow around a 1920s aeroplane has inspired Zaha Hadid Architects’ eye-catching new mathematics gallery for London’s Science Museum, which opens to the public tomorrow (8 December).

Mathematics: The Winton Gallery explores how mathematicians, their tools and their ideas have helped build the modern world over the past four centuries. It has been designed at a cost of £5m (US$6.3m, €5.8m) as one of several new educational spaces being developed by the museum.

More than 100 objects from the museum’s collection – including an early example of the Enigma code-breaking machine, one of Britain’s first calculators and a 1970s cash register – highlight the central role of mathematical practice in our lives – “from trade and travel to war, peace, life, death, form and beauty.”

The centrepoint of the gallery is the Handley Page ‘Gugnunc’ aeroplane, built in 1929 for a competition to construct safe aircraft. Ground-breaking aerodynamic research influenced the wing design, helping to shift public opinion about the safety of flying and to secure the future of the aviation industry.

The air that would have flowed around this historic aircraft in flight has inspired the layout and lines ZHA have created for the gallery, from the positioning of the showcases and benches to the three-dimensional curved surfaces of the central pod structure.

“We were hugely impressed by the ideas and vision of the late Dame Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher when they first presented their design for the new mathematics gallery over two years ago,” said Ian Blatchford, director of the Science Museum Group. “It was a terrible shock for us all when Dame Zaha died suddenly in March this year, but I am sure that this gallery will be a lasting tribute to this world-changing architect and provide inspiration for our millions of visitors for many years to come.”

As well as being ZHA’s first permanent public museum gallery, the project is the first the studio has completed in the UK since their founder’s death.

“I think this is a fitting legacy,” ZHA senior associate Bidisha Sinha told CLAD. “I think Zaha would have liked it. She was the starting point for this project and she was very involved. When it went to site she was still with us, so she had a keen say on all the main decisions.

“Zaha and Patrik both trained in mathematics as their first degrees and there has always been a fascination with the subject in our work as a practice. The opportunity to see if the architecture of the gallery could really showcase mathematics really drove us. We needed some good news [as a practice], and I think this has turned out well. We’re going to make maths cool again.”