Society for Environmental Graphic Design Seventh Annual Symposium on Exhibition Design

New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design: Innovation

Pat Knapp/SEGD

Cranbrook Academy of Art Bloomfield Hills, Michigan August 12-14, 2010

Seventh Annual Symposium on Exhibition Design: Innovation August 12-14, 2010

FOUNDING SPONSORS

1220 Exhibits Edwards Technologies Inc.

SPONSORS

Color Ad Signs and Exhibits Electrosonic Interpret Green iZone N.A.M.E.

SCHOLARSHIP sPONSOR

Exhibit Designers + Producers Association

SYMPOSIUM LEADERS

Steven Zucker, Pratt Institute/smARTHistory.org Jan Lorenc, Lorenc + Yoo Design

PARTICIPANTS

The global community of people working at the intersection of communication design and the built environment

Act Locally/Think Globally

August 11-13, 2011 Eighth Annual Symposium on Exhibition Design: The Global Experience
Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan For more information, www.segd.org/#/learning/5247.html

Jonathan Alger, C&G Partners Alvaro Amat, The Field Museum Kent Anderson, Hamilton Anderson Associates Craig Berger, SEGD George Bixby, Parsons The New School for Design Cori Chestnutt, College for Creative Studies Brenda Cowan, SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology Craig Dunn, 1220 Exhibits Brian Edwards, Edwards Technologies Inc. Lisa Fontaine, Iowa State University David Harvey, American Museum of Natural History Michael Haug, Larsen Design & Interactive Craig Johnson, Interpret Green Andrew Kidd, Electrosonic John Kleinpeter, CSU Long Beach DESN David Krueger, Edwards Technologies Tony Kuehn, 1220 Exhibits Eli Kuslansky, Unified Field Wayne LaBar, Liberty Science Center Tim Lawrence, eco systems George Lim, Tangram Design Jan Lorenc, Lorenc + Yoo Design Mike MacEachern, iZone Jeanne Maier, The Franklin Institute Dan Moalli, Design and Production Gregory Neely, Forge Media + Design Linda Perry-Lube, American Museum of Natural History Tony Petruzziello, Electrosonic Jeff Provost, Exhibit Designers + Producers Association Keith Robertson, Color-Ad Signs and Exhibits Jeremy Scheinberg, Alcorn McBride Angela Serravo, Tangram Design David Spatara, SUNY/Fashion Institute of Technology Tim Thomas, Identity Group Jeff Wolfe, Identity Group Steve Zucker, Pratt Institute and smARTHistory.org

New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design: Innovation

Pat Knapp/SEGD

www.segd.org

The New Experience Economy

Craig Berger SEGD

When it was published in 1999, The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore created a revolution in the design community and sparked a universe of discussions about the power of experience and theatrics. Even Wall Street tuned in, and smiled on those companies that used experience as a major component of their business models. The experience phenomenon trickled down from retail/restaurant operations like Rainforest Caf and Starbucks to corporate offices, museums, and even hospitals. Theming and placemaking evolved as major elements, and most experience design was grounded in branding. The web was a supportive cast member, used to reinforce the physical experience but quite separate from it. Today, we dont look at experience design in the same way. We look beyond theatrics to examine how we can integrate information, environments, and graphicsall the tools at our disposalto help people make choices about how they want to engage with products, services, and information. In a world that bombards users with constant stimulation and information, the need for rest and relaxation is obvious. Kids surveyed at Walt Disney World said the second-best experience for them, besides the park, was relaxing by the pool. The new paradigm is clarity, measured delivery, and curation of content. The web is an increasingly important tool, and the ultimate goal is to integrate digital media and information into the physical environment rather than separate from it. Interaction drives new technological advances, and new delivery devices (smartphone apps, mobile web, etc.) provide users the ability to access and control the flow of information as they see fit. Communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, and others provide new ways for people to interact with the world, so savvy companies are creating their own social networks and leaving it to their communities to provide the interaction/content.

The new paradigm is clarity, measured delivery, and curation of content. The web is an increasingly important tool, and the ultimate goal is to integrate digital media and information into the physical environment rather than separate from it.

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We also see other important trends in the design of experience-based environments:

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The integration of public art into commercial environments speaks to the human need for beauty in an increasingly stressful, complex world.
Brothers and Sisters

The relative growth of spa- and wellness-based experiences indicates the need for a relaxation economy. Digital media are increasingly integrated into physical environments, serving as a bridge between the virtual and real worlds. Wayfinding and other user information is increasingly integrated into environments, responding to the need for clarity and curation of essential information in the physical world.

The Museum of London uses a smartphone app to link its exhibits to the city itself. Designed by interactive agency Brothers and Sisters (London), the app overlays historical photos of London over real-time street images generated by the phones cameras.

All these trends point toward the inevitable merging of environmental graphics, information design, and exhibition design. n

New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design: Innovation

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Brothers and Sisters

Innovation, Collaboration, and smARThistory.org

Steven Zucker Pratt Institute and smARThistory.org

An art historian by training, Steven Zucker was chair of the art history department, then dean of graduate studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology before joining Pratt Institute as chairperson, History of Art and Design. He is also co-founder and executive editor of smARThistory.org. Museums try to be comprehensive and encyclopedic. I guess this worries me. The notion that we can contain knowledge in a single volume, or library or institution, seems a very dangerous idea. Instead, there needs to be far more cooperation among institutions, and we need to actively seek opportunities for collaboration. We can now watch lectures online for free. So what should we expect from our museums? What do they have to offer that we cant consume from our computer screens? A direct and intimate experience!! That will always remain enormously important. But designers may also need to think outside the museum walls to facilitate learning.

...designers may also need to think outside the museum walls to facilitate learning.

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Bill Gates predicts that in five years, most meaningful learning will happen off-campus. We will continue to experience an explosion of very high-level, curated information thats put out there for formal learners. smARThistory.org is a part of that trajectory. Five or six years ago, Apple introduced podcasting. Using this tool, a friend and I went to the Met and recorded a conversation about a painting we didnt like. It was irreverent and meant to counter the traditional audio guides that were then still dominant. We intended this as a spontaneous conversation that would be engaging to informal learners, but at a high level. We continued to create podcasts for the Met and began to embed them in our online courses. Our studentsthe same ones who were NOT reading their textbooksloved them! Now, smARThistory. org gets about 40,000 visits per month from about 150 countries. It provides informal clips/sound and visuals. In these clips, were finding our way through a painting, or sculpture, or around a piece of architecturemodeling what we want learners to see or notice about the art or architecture. We want people to have direct, intimate experiences with the object or space. We show them how to see. Mostly we want to spark conversation, to get rid of the hushed experiences that often take place in art museums and replace them with a real experience. We did a project with the Portland Art Museum to see how smARThistory.org would work in a museum environment. We invited senior curators, educators, and docents to speak about objects in the permanent collection. We ended up with about 18 recordings, and discovered that there is something very powerful about creating this type of immediate content in the galleries. We also found that museums need designers to help them make these experiences more successful. The bottom line is that we put the means to create content in the hands of the content experts. They created an app out of it and made it available for visitors to use on site, even if they didnt have their own smartphone. It was also a great facilitator of social interaction in the galleriespeople felt like they were eavesdropping on intimate conversations among the experts. Using tools like smARThistory, or similar models, I see a future where customized learning paths are institutionally accredited. Informal learning becomes increasingly important. And universities, museums, and libraries become integrated networks less concerned with institutional identity and more concerned with collaboration. n

New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design: Innovation

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Cloud Computing: The Game-Changer

Brian Edwards Edwards Technologies Inc.

Experience-based venues are still popular and will explode anew when the economy loosens up. When this happens, cloud computing will be a major game-changer. Cloud computing offers the ability to use the Internet in a completely different waynot just as another layer added on to the store experience, but as the means to totally integrate the Internet into bricks-andmortar environments. In the newest generation of Disney stores, the core attraction is a 30-minute experience totally personalized and customized for each child. Standing in front of a mirror with a giant monitor behind it, a little girl picks up a princess tiara or dress andthanks to RFID tags and videoshe is cast as the princess in her own personal movie. Its her birthday, and the software knows it, so customized content is generated around that event. The experience is unique to her, and magical.

Were no longer creating objects, but an ongoing process for delivering fresh, new, and engaging content.

At Hard Rock Cafe, exhibits like this one are no longer just static displays. A monitor attached to the cloud allows the venue to bring in live Twitter fees, so that new experiences are created all the time.

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At the Times Square Visitor Center, the cloud allows changes in the physical environment to support the specific event.

Whereas this level of technology would formerly have required rack rooms, multiple servers and computers, and a large amount of back-of-house space, cloud computing allows us to achieve it with none of the above. We dont even need control rooms anymore. All of the interaction is done on an iTouch, and the palette of technological possibilities is unlimited. So the experience no longer has to be about the technology, it can be in spite of the technology. This changes the model for the producer, as well. Instead of doing work for hire and walking away, its ongoing and feebased. Instead of buying a product, the client is buying a process. Instead of huge changeovers in equipment, were dealing with software upgrades. Were no longer creating objects, but an ongoing process for delivering fresh, new, and engaging content. This can work in museums as well as retail stores. At the Times Square Visitor Center, which is rented for various events, the cloud allows us to change the physical environment to support the specific event. At the Hard Rock Caf, instead of just artifacts in the

display cases with little tags to read, theres actually a monitor attached to the cloud that allows us to bring in live Twitter feeds and other social networking, so that new experiences are created all the time. At the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, we can link the museum to the outside world, hooking to the cloud and following certain stories happening around the world, like Plastiki, the ship made of recycled bottles thats cruising around the world and sending Tweets and live images back to the museum. Or tracking relevant science topics as they happen in the outside world. It connects visitors with the world outside the museum and allows them to pursue topics of interest after they leave. Today, most museums dont have the infrastructure or mindset to deal with ongoing costs for cloud computing. But using the cloud is cheaper in the long run; the equipment is always up to date. This goes back to the idea of collaboration, and may help museums work together to deliver great content. The cloud is there and can help everyone share. n

New Directions in Exhibition and Environment Design: Innovation

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Exercise: The Power (and Puzzle) of User-Generated Content

Eli Kuslansky Unified Field

The traditional model of museum as ultimate authority is rapidly changing. A new generation of citizen scientists is using technology tools both inside and outside the museum to set the pace of content development. Today, museums must learn how to develop and maximize user-generated content, leveraging personal narratives, social networking, and technology to create content and experiences that engage multiple points of view. The results can be hard to predict and channel. Symposium participants engaged in a two-part exercise designed to highlight the mechanics and challenges of user-generated content. Part 1 Divide into teams of five to six. Choose a team leader. Choose a topic card and review the topic. On the provided index card, each team member write one sentence on the topic. When all have contributed, place the index card in the provided envelope. Part 2 Switch envelopes with another team. Combine all the listed ideas in the new envelope into one cogent paragraph of three sentences describing the topic. In doing this, you can really see the challenges that content editors face in summarizing and trying to represent multiple viewpoints. Conclusion: Everyone wants user-generated content, but often, they dont know what theyre going to get. It might be off-topic, inappropriate, and controversial stuff. That may be part of its charm. n

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Innovations in Dynamic Wayfinding

For visitors entering the doors of a hospital or other health-care facilityespecially those experiencing stress over the illness of a loved one hospitals can be a daunting environment. Often, they must negotiate long corridors, multiple elevator banks, connections among various buildings, and maze-like routes to reach their final destination. Language and literacy barriers magnify the stress. Today, helping visitors navigate through complex facilities is one of the most pressing issues facing hospital operators. Lobby directories, static signage, and printed maps can help, but often fall shortresulting in frustrated patients and visitors, wasted staff time, and ultimately, lost business for hospitals. New technologies such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) can help by providing real-time, personalized navigation through complex environments. Identity Group introduced its new passive RFID wayfinding system at the SEGD Conference + Expo in Washington, D.C., in June 2010. When visitors enter the hospital, they are given a user alias (for security purposes) and an identification badge embedded with an RFID antenna. Once their destination is entered into the wayfinding database, they begin their journey. As they walk through the facility or campus, their badge is detected by a series of ceiling-mounted RFID antennae that can read the badges within five to eight meters. At key decision points (such as hallway intersections), digital signs mounted to the walls or on fixtures display text, arrows, and icons specific to the visitors destination. Between visitors, the displays default to common destination information. Typefaces, arrows, and symbols can be displayed consistent with static wayfinding signage. Because the system is in real time, text directions can be provided in the visitors preferred language. And because construction is a way of life in many hospital environments, instructions can be revised to incorporate detours. The systemwhich could also be adapted to museum and other institutional environmentsin no way replaces static signage. Instead, its designed to support and enhance it. It allows real-time secure personalization of the journey and can help eliminate naming confusion for departments and functions and reduce information overload for visitors. n

Tim Thomas Identity Group

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Learning from Rocky: Experiences in Outdoor Media Interpretation

Craig Johnson Interpret Green

How can exhibition design interpret the beauty and meaning of our relationships with plants, animals, and ourselves? How can we use nature to inspire design in the built environment? The wild, undomesticated aspects of our world can be an inspiration for what we do as exhibition designers. Allowing the natural world to have a voice in the built environment and the spaces that humans do not control can improve our lives. The Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center in Philadelphia is a good example of a destination locationan interior, domesticated space whose content is built around the natural world. Content about the watershed connects the inside of the center to whats happening outside. With Steve Feldman Design, Talisman Interactive and Interpret Green helped created media that serve as a bridge between the inside and the outside. Live NatureCams provide underwater glimpses of the fish ladder. Interactive exhibits allow you to enter your zip code and learn about your own personal watershed. An aerial flight simulation provides birds-eye views along 540 miles of the Schuylkill River. Because the interpretive center is located in the floodplain (and has been flooded eight times in the past seven years), all exhibits are submersible and removable in two hours.

Inside the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center, interactive exhi9bits connect visitors to the natural world outside.

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Interpret Green

megapixel camera so that visitors can take photos, then bring them back to the center to share. Exhibition design also provides opportunities to help people interpret art, instead of telling them what it is. Philadelphia is known for its iconic Rocky sculpture on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. Its controversial because some do not consider it real art. And yet tourists flock there to take photos in front of it and support an entire informal industry around Rocky t-shirts, water, and other merchandise.
Interpret Green

Philadelphias iconic Rocky statue is a spontaneous theatrical space and destination for personal documentation.

In the multimedia, participatory Water Lab, visitors can take samples of the river water, put it under high-powered microscopes, and see exactly whats in the water. With the help of a biologist, but not controlled, it continually surprises. This is the kind of experience you can create when you link museum centers to nature. The DuPont Environmental Education Center is part of the Russell W. Peterson Wildlife Refuge, but the real destination is the outdoors. The interactive Nature Now table is meant to anchor you in the right now, but it is only an orientation for the real thing. The refuge itself is the core experience, while the center plays only a supporting role. Nature Now stations inspire and inform about the environment immediately surrounding the center. Social media are used to create a learning community. Binoculars lent to visitors will have an integrated

What can we learn from Rocky? The statue has become a destination for personal documentation. It enfolds mytho-poetic content connected to popular cultural and celebrity. It has its own self-organized social media experiences. We also know the value of the experience is independent of the quality of the art, and that it provides ad-hoc entrepreneurial opportunities. How can this spontaneous theatrical space inspire what we do as designers of exhibitions and experiences? n

Because the FWWIC is located in the floodplain and has been flooded several times in recent years, all exhibits are submersible and removable in two hours.

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Interpret Green

The Case for Play

George Bixby Parsons The New School for Design

Sure, weve heard that all work and no play makes uswell, boring and uninspired. Tapping our inner child can jumpstart curiosity, creativity, and learning. So why arent more museums and cultural institutions leveraging the use of good old-fashioned play (as opposed to technology-driven play) in their exhibition environments? At Parsons, where I am an MFA candidate in Design+Technology, we talk as much about when NOT to use technology as when to use it. At Cranbrook, we worked on a design exercise adapted from the Instruction Set for Strangers project I worked on with Professor Lucille Tenazas at The New School. In this design exercise, we explored interfaces as connectors between people in socially mobile contexts. Symposium participants were divided into teams, which each chose a nearby location they felt had inherent meaning in its architecture, history, use, or current cultural significance. The teams observed and discussed the space, paying attention to modes of interaction, while noting social, personal, and cultural behaviors. Each team was given 30 minutes to design an intervention that responds to the space and its inherent issues using play to drive the interaction.

While we often associate the concept of play with games or gaming, it is deeply rooted in our behavior.

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For this exercise, the teams borrowed the mechanics of such well known games as chess, hide-and-seek, exquisite corpse, Blind Mans Bluff, and others as the means for introducing play. The results showed how exhibition design professionals can tap play to engage visitors and facilitate interaction with content and each other in socially mobile contexts such as museums. The results were fascinatingand just plain fun. Games ranged from a simple hopscotch-like interaction with stone steps across a pond to a Blind Mans Bluff variation that had blindfolded volunteers following an intricate path of string to find an apple prize. Another group wove an intricate string web/costume that connected the players, who chanted and balanced a water bottle on a makeshift platform in the middle. Other games included a variation of musical chairs and a maze made from string and ending with an artwork that maze followers could contribute to. While we often associate the concept of play with games or gaming, it is deeply rooted in our behavior. However, despite significant research in the field, its nature is still mysterious, and understanding how we can use it to drive an interaction is a great challenge for designers. But one thing is clear: play is part of human nature, and despite the proliferation of technology in museum spaces, there will always be a place for fun and games. n

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The Intersection of Art and Exhibition Design

Jonathan Alger C&G Partners

The integration of art and exhibition design may seem obvious, but its one of the more significant trends we never talk about in our field. Visual and installation art are major inspirations for exhibition designers. Christos The Gates project in Central Park, Donald Judds minimalist constructions, Jenny Holzers text-rich digital works, Jaume Plensas Helvetica sculpture and Crown Fountain, Mark Evans amazing leather murals, United Visual Artists atmospheric sound and light installation at Durham Cathedral, and Xu Bings large-scale calligraphic scrolls have all touched our firms work. They also show how much art and exhibition designgood exhibition design, that ishave in common:
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They are singular; they have a oneness to them. They are disruptive. They thwart expectations. They include no instructions, demanding that the viewer figure it out.

If your exhibition design is disruptiveif it quickens the visitors heartbeat and causes him or her pausethat can actually be more didactic if thats the goal. Weve aspired to disruption in recent projects such as our From Memory to Action exhibition at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Collaborating with Potion, we updated the Holocaust story to talk about modern-day genocide. There are no artifacts, but a lot of imagery and tools meant to compel visitors to take action against genocide while they are there. Visitors engage with an interactive table to experience testimonials about genocide in places like Rwanda and Darfur, and at the conclusion of the exhibit are asked to sign a pledge to take at least one small step to stop genocide. As they submit their pledges, a digital wall display shows the pledges in real time. At the National Museum of American History, our Star Spangled Banner exhibit attracted between 2 and 4 million people in its first year. It borrows from art to display a singular, large-scale object: the same flag that inspired Francis Scott Key when he wrote the song that became our national anthem. Again in collaboration with Potion, we created a giant interactive table that allows visitors to explore a life-sized version of the flag. There are no instructions; the interaction is singular in its simplicity.

Chuck Choi

In the Voices of Liberty exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Jaume Plensa-inspired letters provide the backdrop to listening areas.

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Timekeeper at the Museum of Jewish Heritage was designed to help visitors engage with Andy Goldsworthys living Holocaust Memorial Garden.

For Voices of Liberty at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, we created an ambient soundscape that gives visitors access to the multitudes of objects that the museum is not able to keep out on display. We used mobile technology as the carrier for the information: iPod Touches loaded with sound files. But this is not simply an audio guide. High-fidelity headphones are equipped with RFID chips so that, as visitors move through the space, the system tracks their location and knows when to active the sound clip for that zone. When someone steps into a zone, their sound clip syncs with others already in the space, so that people experience the clips together. You can see the influence of Donald Judds work in the benches, while Jaume Plensa-esque letters provide the backdrop in one listening area.

Timekeeper, another installation at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, was designed to help visitors engage with artist Andy Goldsworthys living Holocaust memorial garden, a contemplative space meant to be experienced over time. In an eloquent statement representing survival against all odds, Goldsworthy hollowed out boulders to create conical holes in which trees are planted. Timekeeper consists of a closed-circuit TV system that records the garden over time and creates a time-lapse video that visitors can interact with, dialing it back in time to watch how the garden is growing or even catching themselves on video during past visits. In this project, art and exhibition design are entwined: you cant experience the installation art completely without the Timekeeper. So, moving beyond integration, it actually enhances the art. n

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Chuck Choi

Innovations in Engaging the Public: Cooking: The Exhibition

Wayne LaBar Liberty Science Center

Museums havent changed much from their origins as cabinets of curiosities. For the most part, engagement is one-directional: museum controlled, resource controlled, and location specific. But complete control over content requires an abundance of resources. And museums are increasingly resource challenged. In his 2004 book Free Culture, Lawrence Lessig addressed how the Internet could be used to create content authored by many people, not just the museum. Now, social media and the mobile web are making this even easier, allowing museums to expand the resources available to create an exhibition. In 2005, Liberty Science Center embarked on Exhibit Commons, an effort to engage the public in creation of exhibitions. Our early efforts focused on the publics willingness to enter their comments, ideas, and opinions on website such as EOpinion, TripAdvisor, and Amazon. This had significant impact, because between 2005 and 2007, we redesigned and renewed 70% of our exhibitions. Our second approach built on allowing visitors to hack into the operating processes behind our exhibits. Our digital Graffiti Wall was equipped with spray paint cans that visitors could use to spray images on a brick wall shown on a video projector. Our newest experiment engaged visitors in the development of a new exhibition from the ground up, including them as development team members along with curators, content experts, and exhibition design staff. In 2008 we started a social media site as we embarked on the development of an exhibition about the science and technology behind cooking. This is not only a social media site for visitors, but more importantly, the project site for the museum staff exhibition team. On the site, visitors can see prototype floorplans, check schedules, share pictures, and participate in conference calls. We have more than 600 members on the site, we invite the public to 99% of our meetings, and we share all drawings, notes, and reports with them and invite their comments.

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The expanded engagement has totally transformed the project. Big-name chefs, professionals from other museums, and many members of the public interested in cooking have joined and enriched the process. This has really exploded our way of thinking about exhibition design. In July 2011, a 13,000-sq.-ft. exhibit called Cooking: The Exhibition will open and we expect 600,000 to 700,000 visitors per year, many of them engaged in the exhibition long before it came to fruition. Weve made several important observations during our cooking experiment: 1. The subject of the exhibition may be important to the scale of engaging the public in exhibition development, but probably not to the concept of involving the public. 2. By engaging the public in the exhibition development, more people are invested in its success. 3. Some members participated to such a degree that they became leaders in the development process. 4. Social media elements make it easy for people to engage, but they are not designed as project management software, so there are limitations.

5. As we moved out of the conceptual design phases, integrating comments and input from the public became more challenging. 6. The concept of transparency must be well defined, and the project team must weigh the benefits of increased engagement against the challenges of confidentiality. 7. The creation and maintenance of a social media site to engage the public is more work for the exhibition design team. 8. Use of the social media site requires team members to improve documentation, but this has actually been a benefit as they have tracked the origin of ideas that might otherwise have been lost. Creating the social media site and seeking the publics involvement has enhanced our process in many ways and, despite the additional work, we plan to include this type of engagement in our projects moving forward. By interacting with others, sharing content, and opening the process to the community, we can create more robust and impactful exhibitions. n

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Interpreting the Journey to Reconciliation: Telling the Story through the Environment
Journey to Reconciliation: Chinese Expulsion of 1885 is a culturally-sensitive project that uses the power of design to tell the story of a tragic event in which the City of Tacoma, Washington, forcibly expelled its Chinese community in the late 1800s. By creating a context-sensitive landscape design at Tacomas Chinese Garden and Reconciliation Park and by providing an integrated interpretive signage program along the parks pathways, the memorial educates visitors about the event and promotes peace, harmony, and cultural understanding within the city. In 1993, the City of Tacoma passed a resolution to reconcile the expulsion, and the park is a critical component of the community reconciliation plan. Located within a larger waterfront park on Commencement Bay, the park features traditional Chinese-style gardens and is organized into five rooms that provide an ever-changing palette of scenes and features integrated into the natural landscape.

George Lim, Tangram Design Angela Serravo, Tangram Design

Garden Design Consultant: Joe Wai. Environmental graphic design: Tangram Design. Landscape architects: J.A. Brennan Associates. Stone masonry: Peter Andrusko/Written in Stone Productions.

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A major focus of the project was working with the city of Tacoma planners, the Washington State Historical Society, and other community representatives to obtain the most accurate accounting of the events and design a context-sensitive solution that would connect with visitors on an emotional level and promote reconciliation in the community. The City of Tacoma gave us very tight parameters for telling the story: five interpretive panels. So the challenge was, how to build this connection in five panels? The solution was to integrate the stories within the context of the park landscape. Journey to Gold Mountain is a circular interpretive plaque etched with the story of the Chinese immigrants journey to Gold Mountain (their name for the U.S.). It is mounted atop a grinding stone, which they commonly used to process grains, nuts, and other food. Other interpretive elements are integrated with the natural landscape. Reproductions of newspaper pages from 1885 tell the story of the expulsion and, rendered on porcelain enamel panels, they are mounted to large rocks, mimicking how newspapers can be blown about the streets. The Path of Expulsion is an interpretive rock formation symbolizing the event. Taller, darker-colored basalt pillars represent the power and forcefulness of the Tacoma citizens who expelled the Chinese from their homes. Smaller granite rocks represent the immigrants as they were marched out of town. An additional porcelain enamel panel records the aftermath of the expulsion. It is mounted on a larger structure consisting of 27 wooden poles, each representing one of the 27 Tacoma residents indicted for the expulsion. n

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Cranbrook: A Students Perspective

David Spatara Fashion Institute of Technology

Arriving at Cranbrook, I was amazed at the tranquil setting amidst the industry of the surrounding area. It is definitely an oasis that fosters creativity. I immediately felt comfortable with the first activity on the agenda, a discussion group about integrating new innovations in design and management practices. Dinner included great discussions with people like David Harvey from the American Museum of Natural History and Steven Zucker from the Pratt Institute and smARThistory.org. The presentations over the next few days were both very cool and eye opening. The design exercise on Saturday afternoon, Exploring Play was fun and informative. Within small groups, we constructed games using elements of the environment around the Milles House on the Cranbrook campus. My group used the courtyard to construct a maze with string, sticks, and chalk. We had devised a certain path, but it was interesting to see how people make their own paths when given an opportunity. In fact, play is what led me to exhibition design when I was an intern at the New England Aquarium in 2002 and was watched kids make up their own games in the activity center there. Other presentations were inspiring. I loved the work of Jonathan Alger from C + G Partners and the way they transform simple concepts into storylines with many levels of interpretation. On the first project I worked on back in 2004, we used high-pressure laminate for a few graphics for a traveling exhibit. That product was iZone and it was great to meet Mike MacEachern, the president of iZone, and make a connection back to my first job and first project. Attending the SEGD symposium was a great experience on many levels. I made some excellent contacts and learned about new design approaches, ideas, and concepts. I will take these connections and ideas with me as I progress through the one-year masters program in exhibition design at FIT and then onto my continuing professional career. n

David Sparky Spatara, attended the symposium thanks to sponsorship from the Exhibit Designers + Producers Association.

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INTEGRATING IDEAS & TECHNOLOGY

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