I have found a book by Philip Hughes "Exhibition Design". It rises and answers (gives advises) to some very interesting questions concerning to the ways making the exhibition.
Exhibition design and the creation of public displays is an increasingly significant part of life in all areas of the globe. Every year brings new display halls, big enough to accommodate fleets of airships.
Some museums bring fame and attract thousands of tourists to the area, one of the best examples is Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry. It has a very interesting combination of natural and artificial lighten spaces. The unusual shape works like a manifesto (here lives art), people want to visit the Museum even after a short glance on a building. This is a very modern interpretation on how the building for art exhibition should look like. In 18-19 even the beginning of 20th century, most of the museum felt bound to show as many artefacts as they could physically cram into display spaces, while in contemporary galleries and museums a lot of space and light is given to every picture so it makes a significant sense.
There are different types of learners: the ones who learn by watching, the ones who learn by hearing, the ones who learn by doing. To accommodate their varied needs, designers and exhibitors create layers of information. Also, very often the designers create layers based on a length of visit- Short, medium or long, also for: Engineers, School kids and Pilots. The expert, is a person who comes to the museum in order to see smth in particular, for these people there should be special facilities in order to research deeper into the topic of their interest. Frequent travellers are familiar with main landmarks and are interested in different varieties of information, they are motivated by general curiosity. To satisfied the needs of these people, the designers has to plan an infirm end level of enquiry. (explanatory text and videos before the exhibition). Scouts do not know the terrain, but want to pick up the main landmark. These visitors need a highly organised and rigorous top layer of information. Orienteers often do not know where to go in the exhibition, they r just looking for something they like. Very ofter orienteers are the people who were brought by someone else and got abandoned in the gallery. Designers have to think about this kind of people just as well. Also galleries stress on the importance of the design for kids, they want to learn while having fun. Very often the designers create a "rabbit hall" the place which is very attractive for kids, so they can be found easily by their parents when lost.
Exhibition design and the creation of public displays is an increasingly significant part of life in all areas of the globe. Every year brings new display halls, big enough to accommodate fleets of airships.
Some museums bring fame and attract thousands of tourists to the area, one of the best examples is Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by Frank Gehry. It has a very interesting combination of natural and artificial lighten spaces. The unusual shape works like a manifesto (here lives art), people want to visit the Museum even after a short glance on a building. This is a very modern interpretation on how the building for art exhibition should look like. In 18-19 even the beginning of 20th century, most of the museum felt bound to show as many artefacts as they could physically cram into display spaces, while in contemporary galleries and museums a lot of space and light is given to every picture so it makes a significant sense.
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
The other great example is Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, that attracts 24 million visitors per year (Tate Modern in comparison attracts only 5 million visitors). In Smithsonian complex there are more then 136 millions of objects. It hardly needs saying that, worldwide, the appetite for exhibitions and therefore exhibition design increases. Exhibition design aims to demonstrate the tools, some of the world's most successful designers do everything to make an exhibition experience more engaging and memorable.
Smithonian Air and Space Museum
The History of the Exhibition Design
Display is an innate element of human behaviour, constantly practiced in our daily lives. Most houses have casual arrangements of treasures, images and awards in their "living" rooms. Religious buildings such as churches and temples are powerful examples of how techniques of display can be most skilfully employed. Indeed many museum and exhibition spaces often have something of the atmosphere of a temple, which they often resemble physically.
Museum and galleries mainly evolved out of the collections of rich patrons, whose curiosities and artefacts were mostly shown to the other wealthy families. At the end of the eighteen century, the number of such collections were combined to organised for a public display. Museum were built for dual purpose: to accommodate the artefacts and to give the increasingly literate and self-educating population a chance to explore the wonders and learn something new about the world. The UK first dedicated public art gallery was Dulwich Picture Gallery. The gallery proved to be an important precedent for architects and designers of gallery spaces, demonstrating how the space might look, how the light can be introduced.
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Dulwich Picture Gallery
Very often museums were orientated to provoke and amaze the visitor, so they would collect exotic animals, cultural antiques, arts and other object of interest simply by removing them from the original and natural locations, many artefacts acquired narratives that, through thrilling, had little or no basis in truth.
Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, housed a revolutionary Crystal Palace which was a substantial milestone in the history of exhibitions and, for that matter, in the intellectual history of Europe. It showed the world a new type of building, revolutionary usage of materials and of course, a very innovative exhibition space.
Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace
The Evolution of the Modern Display Techniques
Modern display techniques are largely influenced by art and design movements of the early 20th century, principally the development of abstract art and the principles espoused by a vant-garde artists and designers, many of whom studies and taught at the Bauhaus in Germany between 1919-1937. New words: spatial relationship and volume - appeared. Envelope of the gallery, formally treated as an empty shell into which the display was placed, was itself turned into a work of art. The space that grew out of the modernists movement was a minimal environment with empty walls developed at Museum of Modern art (MOMA) in New York. Perhaps the most defining element of MOMA's display legacy was also its simplest. Visitors were encouraged to ignore the artist's historical and social context and to conceder the art separately as an autonomous object.
Interactive Exhibitions
Starting with 1960th, San Francisco Exploratarium developed an interactive habits that allowed visitors to learn directly from experience and have fun at the same time. This type of learning is good for the kinaesthetic learners, who enjoy in doing something rather then observing. Young visitors has begun to pay less attention to traditional advertising and marketing, and increasingly inhabit the parallel digital community. To maintain their reverence to a new generations, museums and institutions are forced to seek out the virtual habitat in which these consumers reside. The digital experience often leads to a physical visit and seems to encourage rather then discourage visitors. Real exhibition is a robust feature of the modern life and unlikely to be replaced any time soon.
The "like it or leave it" of the past generations, is now replaced by a feedback and comment attitude. Nowadays, anyone who wants to gain a substantial information on particular subject, can go to the exhibition where all the facts are mapped out into a 3 demential journey.
The Role of the visitor
There are different types of learners: the ones who learn by watching, the ones who learn by hearing, the ones who learn by doing. To accommodate their varied needs, designers and exhibitors create layers of information. Also, very often the designers create layers based on a length of visit- Short, medium or long, also for: Engineers, School kids and Pilots. The expert, is a person who comes to the museum in order to see smth in particular, for these people there should be special facilities in order to research deeper into the topic of their interest. Frequent travellers are familiar with main landmarks and are interested in different varieties of information, they are motivated by general curiosity. To satisfied the needs of these people, the designers has to plan an infirm end level of enquiry. (explanatory text and videos before the exhibition). Scouts do not know the terrain, but want to pick up the main landmark. These visitors need a highly organised and rigorous top layer of information. Orienteers often do not know where to go in the exhibition, they r just looking for something they like. Very ofter orienteers are the people who were brought by someone else and got abandoned in the gallery. Designers have to think about this kind of people just as well. Also galleries stress on the importance of the design for kids, they want to learn while having fun. Very often the designers create a "rabbit hall" the place which is very attractive for kids, so they can be found easily by their parents when lost.
No comments:
Post a Comment