Interior Display

Multi-stor(e)y

How do museums use their buildings as objects themselves to express their subjects and tell their stories?

How do museums use their buildings to tell their stories? What meaning can the vertical axis of a building bring to a visitor experience?

For the Multi-stor(e)y project, students devised, curated and designed their own museum. Each museum explores a single subject across the six floors of a 1930’s building on Northington St, London, making use of the layering of floors; entry points; visitor routes that rise or descend through the building; and the meaning of being low or being high up, to explore interpretation and visitor experiences.

From an initial long list of ideas, students selected one theme, for which they developed a content outline, considered different types of audience and researched object lists.They explored initial concepts through models and sketches, then they developed them through schematic planning to include scenography, object display, graphics, lighting, interactivity and AV / Digital media.

Projects include a Toy Museum where the building becomes a giant interactive toy box; a museum of Paper that rises up from the origins of paper through industrial paper-making to fly kites from the roof; a museum of memory that explores the history of a Chinese family through eras of historical change; a museum that explores Syria’s descent into war; and a museum that turns the lift shaft into a microscope that takes visitors deep into the human body.

Tutors: Katherine Skellon and Ben Tunstall

Image: Detail image for Under the Skin by Rui Qin