28th November 2011

Exposition Report

In conducting research on this topic it was found that there is almost too much to bring together into a short study. Focusing primarily on practical exhibitions that show their process alongside the finished artefact helped narrow down the information, in other words, focusing on expositions rather than exhibitions.

One of the first examples that comes to mind was the fifth year Architectural degree show in Edinburgh College of Art at the end of the 2010/11 educational year. Colour scheme, exhibition style, font, physical items on show; everything was tailored to match the designs which in turn strongly reflected the concepts. This is a recurring theme through all the varying projects on show. The clean, sharp edged proposal for a car factory is reflected in the well ordered, minimal presentation style whereas, just around the corner, the warming, intricate, and rich content of a food market is complemented by herbs and spices with tactile materials binding design documents. In stark contrast to these two, further along the studio, is a controversial concept dealing with the presentation of jewish wartime art alongside that of the nazis. The design and exhibition space convey a sharp clash with highly contrasting colours, rough materials (including rusted barbed wire) and degraded paper on which the details are laid out.

In thinking about the requirements for this honours project there is a temptation to go wild with the construction of its exposition, one of the ideas that wandered through my head was to create a mini living room. The roots of this concept lie in the area of my study being broadcast design therefor the viewers home is the natural place of presentation. The impracticalities could be solved by flattening the 'room' onto the walls of the exposition as a picture. The problem would then lie in achieving an atmosphere of quality, something that would be near impossible given the constraints of time and space. At this point I feel very strongly that taking a leaf from Mies van der Rohes book would help lead to the most relevant and successful solution. "God is in the details" and "less is more".


In order to achieve a presentation guided by these principles I will follow a similar line of thought to Le Corbusier's statement "A house is a machine for living". I intend to treat the exposition as a machine for portraying content. Using the same process as Mies "to subtract and distill" until left with "almost nothing" the presentations concept shall reflect some of the modernist ideals of the 'interwar years' in which "There would be no applied ornament anywhere". Only that which is necessary shall be included.

Kostof, Spiro. 1995. A History of Architecture. 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, inc.


Die Vögel: Fratzengulasch from timo schierhorn on Vimeo.