Shipshape and Bristol fashion.

Brunel's SS Great Britain was the world's first iron-hulled passenger liner and forerunner to virtually all modern shipping. Through recent improvements led by Alec French Architects, this pioneering structure can now be preserved for generations to come.

You shouldn't need to show off in the presence of greatness. And fortunately Alec French Architects have avoided the temptation to do so in the company of the SS Great Britain; the iron-hulled, steam-powered, screw-propeller-driven liner, designed and built in Bristol in the mid-1800s by legendary engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Affectionately know as IKB to his fans, Brunel was recently voted second only to Winston Churchill in a BBC TV poll to find Britain's Greatest Briton. Attracting almost 400 000 votes, 25 per cent of the poll, the engineer, highly productive in his relatively short 53-year life, surprised many by being rated above military heroes, politicians, authors, royalty, even pop icons. It should come as little surprise to architects; Brunel has long been an inspiration. Ever since Corbusier wrote about eyes that did not see, ocean liners have inspired Modern architects. Beyond the obvious associations, celebrated less convincingly in the 1980s and '90s with masts, gantries, tension wires and sails used to adorn relatively dull buildings, fundamental issues prevail when engineering leads the way. Scale and heroic ambition remain and live on in structures and pieces of machinery that were the product of the world's first generation of industrial engineers; a pioneering generation of engineers led (all too briefly) by IKB.

Following engineering logic, where the superfluous is rarely encouraged, the interventions by Alec French Architects are simple and unadorned, described by project architect Tim Burgess as simple, understated and true to the form of the dockyard aesthetic. The Jefferies Range shed has been simply reinforced and overclad to make a space for an informative, interactive and easy to digest exhibition, designed by David McCabe Design. Unlike other apparently endless chronological exhibitions, the disposition of the artefacts is such that visitors can see their route ahead, gently ramping up to the deck level exit point, without instilling fear of being overfed with historical facts, figures and salvage. The main business here is undoubtedly to see the ship itself. So, the dual phased highlights occur when crossing the new Alec French bridge to the beautifully restored deck, from where interior explorations can begin, and perhaps even more dramatically when descending below the virtual water level; a new glazed water plate that creates an environmentally controlled dry dock chamber. Suffering from severe deterioration caused by the corrosive effects of years of salt saturation, the strategy here has been to dehumidify the chamber to approximately 20 per cent--which should reduce the effects of corrosion to virtually nil.

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Throughout the project the architects had to employ restraint and a physical lightness of touch, with all interventions being reversible. This not only included work to the ship itself as wheelchair lifts and lavatories were creatively integrated, but also to the listed dry dock, with 1m long resin anchors supporting the glazing structure being the most significant physical link and concrete bearing pads that support the struts sitting on polythene so as not to damage the dock masonry below. In anticipation of next year's celebration of Brunel's birth, 200 years on, and plans to create The Brunel Mile, linking his Clifton Suspension Bridge with Temple Meads Great Western Railway Station (a perfect opportunity perhaps to open up the incarcerated Clifton Rocks Railway), this new visitor centre is perfectly placed to inspire future generations of designers along the way.

All photographs by Lance McNulty