After the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent credit crunch, the UK has been facing the most severe economic downturn for 60 years since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Small business such as self-employed crafts makers and artists especially feel the pressure of the changed economy as the demand for crafts products and art pieces shrink with the decrease in general UK people spending. Meanwhile, the rise of new technologies for production such as the 3D printing technology has become increasingly tempting for manufacturing business and construction industry in the midst of an uncertain economic environment owing to the great reduction of material cost, the high efficiency of performance and the versatility in production. It is speculated that the new manufacturing technologies will soon replace many traditional way of making for the sake of reducing cost and improving revenue, which can further tighten the living prospect for full-time makers who are specialised in their skills and less resilient to the changing markets. This thesis, through proposing an extension to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the “V&A Crafts”, investigates how the advancement of modern technologies and mass manufacturing process initiated by the First Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago have shaped the common demand for highly efficient and low cost production in the modern world as an opposition to the slower and more traditional way of manufacturing with hands. At the same time, the project tries to promote a new typology of museum building for storing and exhibiting crafts with the introduction of real-time functioning workshops, which is believed to be able to soften the boundaries between the visitors and the origin of exhibits, and to make crafts relevant again in the modern world.