new directions in exhibition and environment …placemaking jennifer warholak 3 summary of...

Society for Environmental Graphic DesignSummary of Presentations and Activities

Fifth Annual SymposiumCranbrook Academy of Art Bloomfield Hills, MichiganAugust 7–9, 2008

Presented by SEGD and N.A.M.E.

New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design: Placemaking

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Summary of Presentations and Activitieswww.segd.org 3


lacemaking is a term that rarely appears in books and articles on exhibition design or in strategy sessions when museums are be-ing planned. This is unfortunate, since the exhibitions we love and remember most are intrinsically linked to place. The overwhelm-

ing sadness of the Holocaust Museum, the reverence of the Baseball Hall of Fame, or the excitement of large auto show exhibitions demonstrate that the power of place defines how we experience a story and how it impacts us.

The two opening presentations of our Fifth Annual Symposium on Exhibition Design presented two different but equally powerful views of place. Aaron Paley of Community Arts Resources shared how his not-for-profit group produces live performances and activities in public spaces, enhancing the power of those spaces in the community. Lee Skolnick of Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership focused on how the mission and goals of a new entrepreneurial training center were embedded in its architecture and design. Both approaches began with the idea that the place itself is the center of the story. The exhibition is then an activity or structure that reveals the story.

Throughout the symposium, discussions and presentations centered around developing powerful spaces. Jonathan Alger of C&G Partners suggested the idea of the “museumless” exhibition, museum-quality exhibitions that can occur in any setting, from a retail space to a corporate lobby or a public park. The power of the exhibition is derived from the unique setting. Craig Johnson of Interpret Green focused on the theories and practices behind interpreting green buildings and places. Both of these compelling presenta-tions shared the same basic idea: that storytelling is moving beyond tradi-tional museum walls into places where the power of the story can have a direct impact.

Craig BergerDirector of Education & Professional DevelopmentSEGD

Placemaking in Exhibition Design

E V E N T S P O N S O R SLead SponsorsChicago Museum of Science and IndustryEdwards Technologies

Workbook SponsorSparks Exhibits and Environments

SponsorsBurkhardt Leitner ConstructivColor-AdDimensional CommunicationsInterpret GreeniZoneMaltbieMurphy Catton

S P O N S O R P A R T I C I P A N T SMark LaRochelleBurkhardt Leitner Constructiv

Keith RobertsonColor-Ad

Douglas FixellDimensional Communications

Brian EdwardsEdwards Technologies

Craig JohnsonInterpret Green

Ken Ethridge, AIA, RIBAiZone

Charles Maltbie Jr.Maltbie

Mark CattonMurphy Catton

David PiperSparks Exhibits and Environments

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Society for Environmental Graphic Design4

Fifth Annual Symposium

E V E N T L E A D E R SWayne LaBar Liberty Science Center

Aaron Paley Community Arts Resources

Lee Skolnick, FAIA Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership

P A R T I C I P A N T SJonathan Alger, C&G PartnersErik Andersen, Chicago Museum of Science and IndustryAnne Berry Mark Brandecker, Dimensional CommunicationsCharlotte Cagan Miguel Cardenas, Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design PartnershipLisa Carvajal, Children’s Museum of PittsburghCurt Cederquist, MaltbieRemington Cleve, Chicago Museum of Science and IndustryLeslie Ernst, UT Austin Design CenterAnne Fullenkamp, Children’s Museum of PittsburghAimee Keener, Adventure AquariumLee Knight, Exhibitor Magazine GroupDavid Krueger, Edwards TechnologiesHeather Landers, Studio PicoteeJan Lorenc, Lorenc + Yoo Design Tim McNeil, UC Davis Design ProgramAndy Medalie, Christopher Chadbourne & AssociatesChristopher Muniz, Muniz/McNeilTerri Nemer, designRESOURCEJoseph Nicholson, Ueland Junker McCauley NicholsonAndy O’Neill, Canada Place CorporationRoberta Perry, Edwards TechnologiesSteve Petri, Reich + Petch Design InternationalCory Schearer, Erwin-PenlandJo Ann Secor, Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design PartnershipChristopher Smith, Color-AdRobert Sneed, Dimensional CommunicationsTed Swigon, Chicago Scenic StudiosJennifer Warholak, Adventure AquariumDavid Whitemyer, Christopher Chadbourne & AssociatesDuke Windsor, USS Midway Museum

Symposium attendees

Save the Date!August 13-15, 2009

Sixth Annual Symposium on Exhibition Design: The Many Levels of Interaction

Cranbrook Academy of Art

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

2009 Symposium Chairman: David Harvey, Vice President of Exhibitions,

New York Museum of Natural History

Interaction—whether low tech, high tech, or no tech—is crucial to the pro-

cess of engaging visitors with exhibitions. The Sixth Annual Symposium on

Exhibition Design will explore how visitor interaction affects exhibition de-

sign. Exhibition designers and planners will share the issues, processes,

and best practices in using interaction in exhibition design.



Architecture-inspired placemakingAt the Augusta Canal Museum in August, Georgia, the client gave us an empty mill space and set us loose. The building had already been renovated, but the museum space still had the same old painted-brick walls, scarred wood floors, and ambience of an old textile factory. Our job was to use that space to tell the story of Augusta’s booming textile history and the canal system it built to generate power for the mills.

Existing structures in the space drove the exhibition design. The mill had very large windows every three feet. Blocking them off and creating a black box would have completely destroyed the identity of the old mill and what it was like to work there. So we designed a series of scrim graphics that, depending on the time of day, are transparent or opaque.

We used the palette of the original mill—basically green and cast iron—to drive the exhibit graphics. Using old photos of the actual mill equipment, Mystic Scenic Studios created bases for the signage elements that were in-spired by the original machinery. By cutting through the flooring, we showed the old pipes that carried water from the canal to the generator to the mill.

Borrowing place from natureThe Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Brigham City, Utah, is on the path-way of millions of migratory birds. It’s a birders’ and photographers’ para-dise. For the James Hansen Wildlife Educational Center on the refuge, we

Integrating Place, Architecture, and Space

Three of our recent projects demonstrate how the exhibition design process integrates place, architecture, and space to create an engaging, visitor- friendly environment.

Andy Medalie and David Whitemyer, Christopher Chadbourne & Associates

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge (Christopher Chadbourne & Associates)



Working group

Samples of final work

used the area’s natural palette—light, natural features, and panoramas—to reinforce a sense of place.

Inside, the exhibitions and focus are pointed at a single window that pro-vides a breathtaking view of the refuge. The ceiling has wing-like structures, translucent materials are used throughout, and the room comes to a point where you look out at the refuge.

For the eight-mile loop through the refuge, we designed a series of roadside panels using the trestle wood. The panels give visitors the tools to get out of their cars and learn about the landscape firsthand.

Finding place in heritageOur client at the National Museum of the Marine Corps did not want to be tied to the traditional formal architecture associated with most of the world’s important military museums. They wanted an environment very specific to the Marine Corps, its mission, and its heritage.

There was also the assumption that the exhibits in the museum’s central gallery would be permanent, lasting in the 50- to 75-year range. The gallery features lots of bronze, with etched stainless steel graphics. Eight lit niches hold iconic photos and quotes selected to show this museum is not about generals and colonels, but about all the men and women who make up the Corps.

The space is full of larger-than-life elements, including a Sikorsky heli-copter in the central gallery. Medal imagery and the blacks and browns of Marine uniforms inspire the World War II gallery. The History Gallery recalls boot camp and the strength of the Marine Corps identity. We assumed that about 70 percent of visitors would be Marines and their families, but the rest would not be familiar with Marine Corps history. So we had to provide some history lessons as well as build on the camaraderie that exists among Marines and their families.

Placemaking Exercise

Our ongoing project at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History involves a building with intrinsic architectural challenges. It’s a square dough-nut shape with a courtyard in the center. The client wants to plan an exhibit that covers 14.6 billions years of history, provides easy access to all galleries, and features effective way-finding. They want visitors to engage with all the content, but also want to provide a fast-track walkthrough for those visitors with less time.

They added a new lobby and a fast track hallway that allows people to zip in and out of the parts of the museum they want to visit. What are some pos-sible solutions to this space-planning challenge?



Balancing Architecture and Exhibition Design

What constitutes a balance between architecture and exhibits? The way spaces are shaped drives how exhibits are inserted, how light and acoustics factor in, how symbols or icons give visual cues, and how finishes continue the expression of mission, use, or heritage.

At the Delaware Agricultural Museum, an exhibit on the craft of whittling demonstrates how iconic clues can inform the environment and tie back to place. The exhibit draws inspiration from checkered tablecloths drap-ing roadside stands, providing an atmospheric backdrop to learning about whittling.

The First Shots exhibit at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, shows how the imbalance of spatial allocation toward one topic is ultimately resolved through subsequent narrative and exhibit ele-ments. It’s an effective moment of immersion before you enter the main narrative itself.

The site of the original President’s House, adjacent to the Liberty Bell Center, is an exercise in exploring the balance of space, architecture, and exhibits. In 2003, Congress requested that the U.S. Park Service com-memorate the historical issues surrounding the house. The goal is to tell the story of the slaves that Washington held on the property and how, at that time, slavery was not allowed in Philadelphia.

The project creates some fascinating issues around physical space and exhibition planning. For example, does it seem appropriate to recreate the house, or perhaps just create a “shadow play” using the footprint of the original house? Do you actually need to provide a building? How

can fragments of the house, such as chimney elements, be used to interpret the stories? What about providing the ability to look down into the actual foundation? How do you turn what is now a green lawn into a place where you can honor the stories of enslaved people while also telling the story of the new re-public that had just gained freedom from the British?

Joe Nicholson, Ueland Junker McCauley Nicholson

Through counterpoised interaction, Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell Center connects the bell with Independence Hall as well as with the exterior U.S. National Park space and the interior pavilion space. (Ueland Junker McCauley Nicholson)



Exhibition Research and Placemaking

Research is a loaded word. We use it to describe any kind of investigation or exploration that we do. But it also has some negative connotations, so perhaps we should consider calling it something else.

At UC Davis, we’ve done research on how to engage students in our field and how to design our museum as a learning laboratory. We’ve learned some important things about today’s design students:n They know far more about technology than you do, and what they don’t

know they can learn five times faster. n They can’t draw (or at least conduct rigorous ideation) as well as design

students in the past. A lot of that has to do with computers. n They don’t like to read and when they do, they like to pick and skim, and

read more on line. n They don’t know about placemaking, exhibition design, or EGD.

The UC Davis Design Museum has more than 500 objects and is known for its changing exhibitions of national and international design-related material. We’re also in a unique position to investigate design and serve as a learning lab for students involved in exhibition design. They get hands-on experience building exhibitions and doing installations.

They also have opportunities to be involved in ongoing research such as our work on green design and sustainability and exploring sustainability in exhibition design. Our recent exhibitions include Peace Begins Here, 100 messages about peace that were also installed on public transit; GreenStops, designs for a self-sustaining rest stop; and Fashion Con-scious, an exhibit about sustainable fashion design.

And back to that dirty word: research. Does our field warrant a research focus? If so, what topics? Promising areas in exhibition design include its history, critical design reviews of exhibitions, hybrid exhibit/narrative en-vironments, and communication methodologies in exhibit environments.

These same topics apply to other areas of environmental graphic design. The processes and approaches are the same regardless of application. Wherever you need to interpret information for people, communication and story are key. The objective is to teach someone something. That’s the measure of success.

Tim McNeil, University of California Davis

Student exhibition models (UC Davis)



Interpreting Green Buildings and Landscapes

“The closest distance between two people is a story.”

Much of the development in the green/sustainability movement is invis-ible. You see a LEED building and you can tell it’s different from other buildings, but you don’t see all the intent that’s infused in it. Interpreting green buildings and spaces is a way of recording this living legacy. From ceilings to HVAC and from carpets to toilets, everything becomes an op-portunity for interpretation.

At its Boulder store, REI runs a tour and provides brochures and in-store markers explaining green features. At the Desert Living Center in Las Vegas, AldrichPears Associates interpreted the subject through exhibits, and then interpreted how they interpreted the subject, designing a series of sculptures that illustrate the basic green building concepts in more subtle ways.

Craig Johnson, Interpret Green

The Sun Edison Tour, a 100 city, 150 day tour to promote solar energy, was a classic example of having to walk the talk. The touring trailer was only 8 ft. wide in traveling mode but folded out in origami fashion to 24 ft. for exhibition. It was pulled by a biodiesel truck. Exhibition elements were as green as possible, using mostly wheatboard and fabric that could be re-used or recycled. (Interpret Green)


Fifth Annual Symposium Interactive or participatory media are ideal for telling green stories because they allow visitors to be the co-creators of their own interpre-tive experience and contribute to the knowledge base. They also provide meaningful interactions beyond the immediate experience. Adaptive interfaces allow for multi-lingual, multi-generational, and multi-cognitive learning styles.

Viewing the vital signs of buildings and landscapes is also emerging as an interpretive tool. Real-time monitoring of electricity and water use, air quality, etc., allows visitors to view the information via interactive kiosks, interactive graphics, or the Internet. At the University of Vermont’s stu-dent center, students using the Internet or a kiosk can access real-time data on various vital signs. They can also isolate the information in vari-ous ways, determining, for example, how many pints of ice cream equal the energy currently being used.

Similar programs look at current weather conditions, monitor wind speed, compare insulation and heat absorption on vegetated vs. conven-tional roofs, and key digital floor plans to information nodes. At Harvard’s Cowperthwaite Street residences, a touch-and-drag map is keyed into the city of Cambridge’s bus system. Buses are equipped with GPS units so that users can monitor their locations.

Desert Living Center (AldrichPears Associates)



Using Technology to Make Place: Liberty Science Center

Liberty Science Center is directly across from Lower Manhattan in New Jersey’s Liberty State Park. We recently went through an extensive renovation, including a brand new wing and entrance and redevelopment of almost every exhibit inside the center.

Our mission was to be audience focused, socially relevant, technology-imbued, and always innovative and connected to the human impulse to better our world.

Museums are good at three things: exhibiting real things; demonstrat-ing real processes; and encouraging personal creation, a growing trend wherein you are creating actual content that other visitors use, or the exhibits don’t function without your input.

We’re creating place around technology. It starts in the entry, which we call the Times Square of Science and Technology. You’ll see sculptural el-ements hanging from the atrium ceiling that serve as projection screens for news feeds, and vertical LED strips that are the conduits for RSS feeds. This extends throughout the center, where we use high-tech media extensively, from videos in the Infection Connection exhibit to a digital graffiti wall and, in our Communication exhibition, an interactive exhibit that uses sophisticated software to help visitors create handprints on a digital cave wall.

We’re also using technology to allow visi-tors to add to the knowledge base and even change the center’s content. We’re encour-aging them to change the programming in our interactive exhibits, contribute to a new exhibit based on cooking science. It’s all about getting visitors engaged in the content. That’s what we try to do, using graphics, technology, and media.

Wayne LaBar, Liberty Science Center Experience Services

Liberty Science Center



Discussion Forums: Placemaking in Exhibition Design

How do we integrate multimedia into the placemaking process? At what point should the whole team get together and weave together narrative, storyline, and dynamic display ele-ments? How much of the important content should go into a media presentation as opposed to static displays? What about those blackouts and breakdowns?

Using Multimedia to Create a Sense of Place“Have discussions about multimedia elements as early as possible in the design process. First, decide the concepts you want to communicate, and then determine the best way to communicate those ideas. Is it using dynamic media? Or will a static approach work best? If it does lend itself to media, what is the best type of media to use? How will it integrate into the environment?”

“It totally depends on the project, the institution, its ability to support the media, the audience, and a lot of other factors. Some of the biggest brand names in the museum world—for example the Getty—will say ‘No media in our galleries.’”

“There is no single answer. I was just at the Terror Haus in Budapest, housed in a building where the Secret Police operated its reign of terror over Hungary for many years. Every room is like an art installation, but there are very few artifacts and tons of media. It was the most moving museum experience I’ve had in years.”

“At Liberty Science Center, we’re one of the first museums to use cell phone technology. We’re still figuring out how it’s working and the impact on our center. But the best impact is that visitors are truly engaged with the center.”

“We’re working on a cool kiosk for a grocery store chain in the Southeast. Lots of grocery chains have interactive bonus cards using RFID technol-ogy. You go to their site, where you use a shopping list to click on what you want to buy and then send your husband or wife to the store to pick it up. They can scan the card, print out the list, and get a map to the store. If you buy shampoo every third week, it’ll remind you.”



A few years from now, sustainability will just be part of what we all do. But for now, clients often want to talk about the bottom line: how much will it cost us? Consensus is that using sustainable processes, practices, and products adds approximately 15% to project costs. But the nuances are a lot more complex than just dollars and sense.

Sustainability in Exhibition Design“It’s not about the solar collectors or the wind generators, but about how you approach the project. Miraculously, the government is actually help-ing by insisting that projects they’re involved with are LEED certified.”

“We got LEED points just for putting bike racks in front of the building.”

“It’s about attitude and orientation. In the LEED process, you can earn up to four points for design innovation, one point if your staff is LEED certified, and education points for interpreting green building features in signage or other graphics.”

“Developers want sustainable features because they increase the value of their property.”

“Green can be a powerful marketing tool and even a fundraising tool. Think about sustainable capital campaigns. No donor wants to put their name on a new HVAC system, but if you call it the Sustainability Cam-paign, it’s much sexier.”

“We try to have a goal of zero waste when we’re building an exhibit.”

“So what if the client is not at all interested in the idea? This is an area where we can really make a difference. So why not go out and prosely-tize? They’re not going to fire you for it. It’s OK to push.”

“Construction debris makes up 40 percent of the material in landfills.”

“Think about the life cycle of an exhibit as you develop it, not just the pro-duction processes.”

“It really makes you think about all areas of design and our responsibili-ties as designers.”

“At our museum, our mission is to be sustainable, even down to encour-aging visitors to bring their own cups and bottles of water.”

“If you can convince a client to do one single thing, like use non-VOC paints or glass instead of acrylic, that’s important. Even the little things help.”

“What about organizing a swap website where when you’re done with your exhibits and materials, you post them on the site and other muse-ums can use them?”


Fifth Annual Symposium Architecture and the Exhibition Design Process“Our era in architecture has moved beyond the iconic building into inte-gration of spectacle and architecture. A great example is the Colorado Convention Center’s Big Blue Bear. The idea of using a giant bear to inte-grate with a building utilizes storytelling on a grand scale. It’s a big step from the abstract fantasies of the last few years.”

“Museums are becoming the town square architecture of today’s society. The grand lobbies of the Newseum and the Constitution Center are not just meant to support the exhibition, but to foster a sense of community. It is no surprise that these places are now centers for major government meetings and media events. The Newseum is becoming more known as an outlet for future news than a place to review the past.”

“Architects and landscape architects are utilizing the garden and the idyl-lic landscape to promote the museum as social space, a place where you just hang out.”

“Everything in exhibition is growing more architectural and more about social space. Trade show spaces are morphing into showrooms and cor-porate exhibitions into meet-and-greet spaces.”

“We may be moving back to an era where the form of the building follows the content of the exhibition instead of the reverse. The spectacle building era may be coming to an end.”

“There is still a lot of demand for the big architecture building, if not in the U.S., then in Asia and the Middle East. The U.S. is becoming the cen-ter for the integration of architecture and exhibition.”

“Architects are starting to get more savvy. The big ones go to museums and read segdDESIGN magazine. They know what’s going on.”

How has the role of architecture changed with respect to exhibition design? How are the two related and what is changing about this relationship? How can spaces be used to enhance exhibition design?

Discussion groups



How do spaces impact the story and how it’s told in exhibition design? How do you make space and place central factors in exhibition design?

Space and the Storyline“Building spaces around objects is an interesting approach to design. By utilizing combinations of small and large objects, transitions can be developed between smaller and larger spaces.”

“A common approach to exhibition today is the central object approach seen in exhibitions like Horse for the Museum of Natural History in New York. One central object defines both the story and the space that radiates from it.”

“Space can serve many functions with the story. It can propel it forward, but often works best by establishing the mood.”

“Visitor centers are often the most difficult spaces to develop because the inside and outside need to be interpreted at the same time. This seems to be where the most cutting-edge exhibitions are occurring that merge architecture, landscape, exhibition, and interactivity.”

“Another powerful form is the exhibition space directly created for an object like the Ransom Center’s exhibition of the Gutenberg Bible or the special room created for famous works of art like Picasso’s Guernica. Object reverence is becoming a powerful tool in developing exhibition spaces as new museums are trying to build themselves around a small number of artifacts.”

“The public still has a hard time with abstract exhibition space. There is still a strong desire for literal environments. Lincoln’s log cabin…the Franklin Institute heart…the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry coal mine. These spaces become well known and beloved exhibitions because of their landmark and literal nature.”



Tour and Dinner at the Detroit Institute of Art

The Fifth Annual Symposium moved beyond the beautiful Cranbrook grounds to the newly renovated Detroit Institute of Arts. The museum’s six-year, $158 million makeover added 30 percent more gallery space, simplified the floor plan, and incorporated new exhibitions and interpre-tives aimed at helping visitors personally connect with the art.

Making structural upgrades to the Beaux Arts building required remov-ing art and reinstalling all the galleries, providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink how the DIA presents its collections to the public. “Our goal was to engage visitors and help them find personal meaning in art,” says DIA Director Graham W.J. Beal. The DIA’s renowned collection is now presented in its historical, social, political, and spiritual contexts, with improved labels, several interactive elements, and high-tech inter-pretive stations.

The Detroit Institute of Arts reinstalled its permanent collections according to a new visitor-centered approach developed by Staples and Charles. Instead of relying on traditional art history, geography, or chronology to organize the collection, the DIA is using thematic groups and stories that tie the art to the human experience. Additional design innovations, includ-ing media installations developed by Pentagram, bring the space alive by en-riching the stories found in the artwork.



Museumless Exhibits

Museumless exhibits are exhibition designs that are not housed in museums. Untethered from their traditional settings, they can rejuvenate zoos and aquaria, corporate offices, gardens and nature centers, libraries, and other facilities and engage and delight visitors.

The Griffith Observatory atop Mount Hollywood in Los Angeles is not a museum. But its newly renovated facilities now include museum-quality exhibitions that encourage visitors to be observers of the universe. The exhibits were designed to appeal to a diverse demographic, so they com-municate the concepts of basic astronomy using grand visual gestures. Because many of its visitors are not English speaking, we minimized text panels. Exhibits include a dramatic, architectural-scaled model of the solar system and the world’s largest astronomical photograph, imaged on a 150-ft. porcelain enamel wall.

Museum exhibits can travel outdoors. Using graphic interventions and interpretation, a decrepit urban site in Buffalo was transformed into a destination. Traceries of previously existing buildings on the site of the Erie Canal Harbor Project were left to give people a sense of the past hustle and bustle, and a ghost façade contains images of the people who worked there.

Museumless exhibits reinforce a sense of the place and its mission. At the National Center for Preservation of Democracy, a display inspired by traditional European train station schedule signs shows a series of quotes about democracy. As the quotes change, a beautiful rain stick sound emanates from the sign’s flip mechanisms.

At the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, museum exhibition concepts were used to make the Fed and what it does more trans-parent. The client wanted to demystify itself, and added credibility by using a museum exhibition ap-proach.

Jonathan Alger, C&G Partners

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (C&G Partners)



Integrating Dynamic and Digital Elements

One of the dangers of technology is that clients tend to see how quickly things change, so they’re afraid to purchase equipment. This is especially true at museums and other places where budgets are tight. You have to help clients think long and hard about what kind of multimedia they’re going to put in and how they can get a long life out of it.

Interactive and dynamic displays are showing up across the landscape, from entertainment to banking. The NBC Experience in Manhattan was the first display of high-definition video, and was very innovative for its time. The Sony Wonder Technology Lab is a very high-tech exhibit with over-the-top interactives and great displays. Banks, showrooms, and trade show exhibits also employ dynamic exhibits and interactives. Signa-ture Bank had the first SEC-approved online banking system, with totally automated touch screen banking. Audi, Ferrari, and Mercedes show-rooms all employ dynamic exhibits and interactives.

JLG Industries, a company that manufacturers scissor lifts, commis-sioned us to produce a 20,000-sq.-ft., double-deck private tradeshow with conference rooms, a press center, and a full bar and restaurant. Using an interactive program, visitors can “virtually” get in the driver’s seat of one of these huge lifts and complete a task.

Multimedia is not always appropriate, of course. In the case of the Re-warding Lives exhibit, which opened at the World Financial Center to welcome employees back after 9/11, multimedia couldn’t compete with the impact of Annie Liebowitz’s photographic portraits.

And sometimes technology just moves too fast. Howard Schultz’s idea was to equip Starbucks’ stores with kiosks so that people could download CDs. The program was introduced just as iPods were taking off. So people

didn’t want to walk into Starbucks and download a CD; they wanted to just plug in their iPods. Starbucks quietly removed the units from the stores and now iPods have a Star-bucks button that allows customers to download while they’re there.

Robert Sneed, Dimensional Communications

Sony Wonder Technology Lab (Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design, Dimensional Communications)



“Real Stuff” in the Digital Age

Our philosophy at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh is to encourage kids to “play with real stuff.” That philosophy supplants the virtual.

How People Make Things is a National Science Foundation-funded exhibi-tion that premiered in 2007. It was inspired by the Mr. Rogers factory tours that told the stories of how everyday objects are made. Its goals are to con-nect familiar objects with manufacturing processes; provide safe, hands-on activities; and encourage girls’ interest in science and technology.

Our challenges were to tell the story of manufacturing within the context of playing with real stuff and to balance the Mr. Rogers’ iconography with the objectives of traveling exhibition design. It had to be flexible enough to fit in a variety of gallery spaces and durable enough to survive three venues per year for five years. It also had to be easily disassembled and reinstalled.

Materiality relates to the “realness” of the exhibition and emphasizes durability. We chose oak flooring, wood tabletops, industrial-grade com-ponents, powdercoated sheet metal, and real manufacturing artifacts. Rather than sourcing new products, we tried to salvage used pieces. (A collection of 900 Matchbox cars came from eBay, for example.)

Each of the exhibit’s rooms is self-contained, but provides glimpses into the next process. In transitional spaces, word panels contain synonyms hinting at what’s to come, adding another layer of information and a way to break down the big concepts of manufacturing and engineering. Museums today feel the pressure to install multimedia everywhere, but children’s venues are different. They are generally lower tech and have less staff, so using complicated multimedia is a lot more challenging. We believe incorporating “real stuff” is an excellent way to help children learn, and our exit interviews show they are actually retaining the information.

Anne Fullenkamp and Lisa Carvajal, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh



Lake Superior Provincial Park Visitor Centre

The Lake Superior Provincial Park Visitor Centre hosts visitors to the provincial park in northern Ontario, and provides a venue and tools for planning their visit. We provided environmentally sensitive and integrated architectural, environmental graphics, site design, and landscape design services.

It was originally perceived as seasonal facility that would not operate in winter. In planning the center, we tried to identify themes relevant to the place, and we asked ourselves what most visitors will not get to experi-ence while they’re in the park. The answer? The power of a late November storm. And so the theme became Power of the Lake.

The lake was woven through every single design decision, from where we sited the building nestled among existing trees to the architecture, which comes directly from the place. The interior palette reflects local materi-als and we used iconic objects to signify the various theme zones. The lake and land unfold through contemporary media that allow visitors to experi-ence the great natural beauty of the park and understand the relationships between the lake, the ecology, and the aboriginal peoples.

Stephen Petri, Reich + Petch

Lake Superior Provincial Park (Reich + Petch Design)



Mayo Clinic Heritage Hall

Our work at the Mayo Clinic Heritage Hall in Rochester, Minnesota, was a nontraditional museum project designed to showcase the legacy of the Mayo Clinic and the donors who helped it grow. It encompasses a 4,500-sq.-ft. space between two major buildings on the campus.

The space had potential for two points of entry, so we had to look at the various entry options and how visitors would experience the space. We ended up going with a single point of entry so that access wouldn’t take up as much room. The space is visible from a corridor between the juncture of the two buildings.

We mapped out the content in the space using “chapter headings” that became area definitions. One challenge was how much space was required for electronic housings. Because it was a space between an old building and a new one, the ceiling planes were different and that too was a challenge. To maximize sound quality, we stretched fabric baffling across the ceiling.

This “museum” did not have many artifacts. The bulk of the content is sto-ries about the center and its development. We emphasized the non-insti-tutional stories and developed exhibits around them. A wagon in the initial display, for example, was owned by a little girl who raised $50 in honor of her sister. That’s alongside the stories of major donors.

Jan Lorenc, Lorenc + Yoo Design

Mayo Clinic Heritage Hall (Lorenc + Yoo Design)



Design as Interpretation: Aileron

At Aileron, the Center for Entrepreneurial Education, we had the opportunity to integrate architecture, site design, space design, and environmental graphics in one project and test design’s ability to tell a story in a very implicit and organic way, using it to embody themes within the actual user experience.

Aileron initially contacted us to do an exhibit that would be located at an unknown site at some unknown time. We entreated them that the entire place should communicate and embody the mission of the organization. We spent months talking to the founder, his faculty, and potential users about what it means to be an entrepreneur. And those are the concepts that live in the center, embodied by everything from how the building was sited on the land to how space was used throughout.

Dayton, Ohio, the home of Aileron, is the cradle of aviation. An aileron is the mechanical part of the wing that provides the airplane with balance, lift, and the ability to change direction. The aeronautical theme became a metaphor, beginning with the wing shape of the building. The LEED-Gold building was made of materials from nearby, and it looks like it’s of the earth. A man-made pond features an infinity edge and, in the shallow reflecting pool near the building, the word “Focus” is spelled out in tiles.

In the center’s great room, a two-story hearth is studded with bronze plaques naming the themes of entrepreneurship (“Big Picture,” “Out of the Box,” “Risk,” etc.). Elsewhere, these themes are manifested in the architecture. A teak-walled Journey Corridor includes quotes from big

thinkers and entrepreneurs, inter-spersed with 5-in. video screens looping footage of journeys in na-ture. The Leadership Hall of Fame includes digital graphics on glass plaques, making them architec-tural pieces rather than signs on the wall.

Lee Skolnick, Lee H. Skolnick Design + Architecture

Aileron (Lee H. Skolnick Design + Architecture)

Live Green.Live Smart.

REDESIGNED FOR 2009

This exhibit is not included in general admission and requires an additional timed-entry ticket. Tour times vary and are subject to change. Please visit www.msichicago.org for more information on schedules and to purchase tickets in advance.

sponsored by: partnered with:

57th Street and Lake Shore DriveChicago, ILwww.msichicago.orgConvenient Indoor Parking

Tour the Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit and learn why living green is living smart! · Step into an eco-friendly home that tells you how much energy it has used in a day. · Touch kitchen countertops made with the help of recycled glass from red stoplights. · Visit a baby nursery that’s not pink or blue—but green.

Purchase your tickets online at msichicago.org or call (773) 684-1414 to experience the “Greenest Home in Chicago.”

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