A Manchester warehouse attached to the world’s oldest surviving mainline station will become a temporary exhibition space for the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI).

The Grade I-listed, 1830 warehouse – designed by civil engineer George Stephenson – is part of the defunct Manchester Liverpool Road Station, described by English Heritage as the ‘Stonehenge of the railway’.

Now MOSI has launched a design competition to turn it into a £4 million, 7,500 sq ft exhibition space.

‘Distinctive in character, the space will reveal the significance of the buildings and provide inspiration for curators and artists,’ reads a statement from MOSI, part of the Science Museum Group. ‘It will offer audiences new opportunities to explore science through historic and contemporary perspectives.’

MOSI will select a design for the temporary space following the competition’s application deadline on 5 August, and expects the project to be completed in 2018.

‘The new exhibition space will help to shift the centre of gravity of the Science Museum Group towards the north and enable the museum to develop its own touring exhibitions that will go on to exhibit across the Science Museum Group and worldwide,’ MOSI adds.

Liverpool Road station – the Manchester terminus of the old Liverpool and Manchester Railway – has been closed to passenger train services since 1844 but operated as a goods yard until 1975.