WINNER
VJ Day 75: The Nation's Tribute
by Kate Dawkins Studio, for BBC Studios Events
Constructing a national tribute to the Second World War veterans who fought in the Far East campaigns was always going to be a complex and delicate task. The challenging environments of London’s Horse Guards, Dover House and The Old Admiralty meant the Kate Dawkins Studio team were working with a canvas bigger than a football pitch in all. Added to this, the emotional subject matter meant work needed to be heartfelt, poignant and beautiful.
The team used projections as a backdrop to the readings, testimonies and musical performances that made up the event. The whole thing comprised 29 separate sequences in all, each with its own unique character and stylistic theme – and the whole thing was put together in a compressed timeline of just five weeks. The projections were used to “transform” the surround buildings, the studio says, into the very environments soldiers back then would have become accustomed to – jungles, the Pacific Ocean, battlefields.
The final result was watched by millions via the BBC, and was the final sign off for celebrations of the day.
The judges said: “Beautiful, stunning and evocative. I only wished I’d been there to see it in person. Using the architecture as a canvas for storytelling while integrating pre-recorded live elements makes the whole space an ‘exhibition’ of the past.”
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Museum of the mind
by Kossmanndejong, for Museum of the Mind
Unlike the usual museum experience, the newest exhibition at the Museum of the Mind in Haarlem, Netherlands, allows people to tell their own stories. This approach allows conversations to go beyond taboos and stereotypes usually associated with mental health, according to exhibition designer Kossmanndejong, and instead concentrate on the “wonder and versatility” of the human mind. The exhibition is set against the backdrop of the city’s Plague, Dol and Leproos Hospital, a building with 700 years of psychiatric history behind it.
Individual mental health is at the core of the show. There are several examples of this in action throughout the space, from personal stories told through audio guides to a finale that cements visitors as part of the building forever through signing the Declaration of the Open Mind. Wayfinding used throughout the exhibition is comprised of wire and nails – a metaphor for the fragility and uniqueness of our minds. We’re all wired differently, Kossmanndejong explains. The multiple wires eventually converge as visitors travel further into the exhibition, creating the final declaration. The final result, the team says, is a “sensitive, stigma-free narrative” attuned to the museum and its visitors.
The Box, Plymouth
by Event Communications, for Plymouth City Council
The Box is one of the UK’s newest cultural institutions, with a mission to share the history of the city with the world. London-based Event Communications led the project through from master-planning through to opening day. It was a complex project, merging multiple organisations and forging one coherent story among them. The space contains more than 3,000 square-metres of interactive galleries, each of which is conceived around a stand-out feature display – around the experience, these displays include everything from a life-size woolly mammoth model, an abstracted Mayflower ship and a projection-mapped model of Plymouth Port.
Positioned off of these stand-out pieces are a series of galleries, each with a different story to tell and method of doing so. Some are highly interactive, others more media-focused. The final product is a transformation of a collection of heritage buildings into one cutting-edge centre. It is, according to the team, the new cultural heart of the city.
Factory 1895
by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, for Lavazza
Like a Wonka chocolate factory but for coffee lovers, Factory 1895 brings visitors into the real, working, state-of-the-art Italian factory in which international coffee brand Lavazza works its magic. The experience is designed for fans of the brand both new and old, and is built on a series of multi-sensory elements which sit visitors right to the heart of the coffee-making process.
Three chapters structure the space: the first transports visitors out into the wider world, where Lavazza’s coffee is grown. Immersive media here creates the impression of being underneath a canopy of leaves in a coffee plantation, or looking out across coffee fields. Chapter two brings visitors back to Italian soil and inside the factory once more, where they can explore the coffee process step by step through integrated media and a raised walkway through the factory’s actual machinery. Finally, chapter three ends the experience in a warm, sophisticated ‘coffee cave’, where visitors can taste the end product itself.
The Electric Nemeton
by Sam Jacob Studio, for King's Cross Central Limited Partnership
It was already gearing up to be a different kind of celebration when Sam Jacob Studio was tasked with creating an “alternative Christmas” display for London’s Granary Square – the pandemic and ongoing lockdowns had made sure of that. In a bid to bring a bit of cheer to the capital during an exceptionally grey period, the team created the Electric Nemeton.
The installation was inspired by the Christmas tree tradition and how forest groves have acted as gathering spaces in Celtic culture. The team achieved this effect with a series of modular pyramids, made from timber and stretched colour net panels. Sam Jacob Studio says it wanted to make more than just a “thing” – a kind of open frame which could be walked through, played in, explored.
The Massacre Of Kingdom
by The Glue Society, for Netflix Korea
For the uninitiated, the Netflix Original series Kingdom is a fictional story set hundreds of years ago in Joseon-era Korea. The show features a plague of the undead – not quite historical fact, but what if it was? This was the thinking behind the behind given to The Glue Society. Tasked with creating a rich and rewarding multidimensional experience for the shows millions of fans, the team created a three-floor museum, which presented artefacts to visitors as if they were real-life history.
Remote collaboration was central to the project, with the team collaborating with designers and artists in Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney to create the “relics” on display. These included hand-painted scrolls, blown glass and even “mummified artefacts. Once made, the objects had to be presented in a way as close to the museum experience as possible” – as the team explained, “every detail had to live up the quality and precision of a real museum”.
Exhibition Design
shortlisted
Exhibition Design