Last night, I went to a lecture by Dinah Casson, of Casson-Mann, given at the RCA in Kensington.
The gist of it was “think about the users”, and “they come to relax, learn, be surprised, laugh, cry, and leave as changed people”.
Casson Mann design museums and exhibitions. If you made it to the AMAZING Hollywood costume exhibit the V&A put together last year, that was their work. I have been to a lot of museums and exhibitions, in many cities and countries, and this is by far the most memorable of my lifetime. Madurodam, in The Hague, probably comes second.
The photo above is of a noise and light study they did for the British Galleries at the V&A. She then told us that she met up with an expert in Georgian architecture (was it architecture?) every week for two years to talk about colour. There are 14 shades of _that_ light green we know and have seen in period movies. Through temperature, light, sound, colour, and more, visitors can experience the collections on a much deeper visceral level than just by putting them in front of an item with a label. If you walk through the British Galleries, you can feel the passage of time and can tell “when” you are in each room, even if it were devoid of artefacts. Well. Depends how good your history is, I suppose :)
They are also working on the new exhibits at Lascaux, the legendary caves in Aquitaine with the Paleolithic wall paintings! After the exhibit, visitors could see excerpts of the cave wall, skinned and resized. Could I guess resized to how big the real life animal would be?
Here are some photos and my notes. I was trying out a new stylus I bought, the Adonit jot touch. Using it on Paper by 53 may not have been the best way to try it, given the bluetooth features don’t work, but I like Paper’s pens and colours much more than penultimate’s.
For more talks by the RCA in the #talkingInteriors series, go to rca.ac.uk
