A firm of architects has been selected to design a £19m Army museum at Catterick.

The design for the 52-hectare site, south-east of Marne Barracks and beside the A1, beat competition from four groups of architects who were invited to submit tenders.

The winning design, by Austin-Smith: Lord, was considered to be both responsive to the landscape and expressive of the purpose of the National Army Museum.

Entrance to the National Army Museum North will be through a three-storey rotunda incorporating a shop, cafe, education facilities, lecture theatre, and orientation area.

The rotunda roof forms a viewing platform for visitors to look out across the outside exhibition area and over displays, such as redoubts and trenches, and demonstrations of heritage military vehicles in action.

From there, visitors will move through to the contextual display gallery, which will recreate the different environments in which the British Army has operated.

They will range from controlled environments - the desert, the tropics and the arctic - to a temperate European habitat that will lead the viewer's eyes from the gallery within the building to the Yorkshire landscape beyond. The arc-shaped vehicle study collection, curving around the back of the building, will house the museum's large collection of military vehicles.

Museum assistant director David Smurthwaite said: "The plans provide practical spatial solutions to the problems of collection management and access. We are now evaluating which local materials can be used to achieve this design."

Austin-Smith: Lord spokesman Simon Pearce said: "The expansive nature of the site and the requirement for a landmark building suggested the need for a composition of simple and pure forms to create a scale and formality that would help to announce the building against the backdrop of Marne Barracks.

"This has been achieved in a design separable into three main elements, each of which has been given a different architectural treatment, reflecting its scale and function."

NAM North is expected to be completed in summer 2005.