MESO – schneider+schumacher: Atmospheric content-driven space for architecture exhibition

schneider+schumacher are among the most prominent contemporary architects in Germany and have built a slew of important buildings all over the country; especially in our mutual home town. Having collaborated before, it was natural for us to help them add a digital twist to their solo exhibition at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM).

Digital exhibition space
Behind the scenes
Publications

Digital exhibition space

Down to earth, deceptively simple and yet always meticulous

Together with schneider+schumacher we devised the concept of an inverted panorama for the exhibition. A cubic structure erected in the darkened central hall of the museum is covered in architectural imagery.

A cubic structure erected in the darkened central hall of the museum is covered in architectural imagery shot by photographer Kirsten Bucher for the upcoming schneider+schumacher book.

The concept of the installation is very influenced by schneider+schumacher’s architectural language, which is humane, utilitarian, down to earth, at times deceptively simple yet always meticulous in detailing, and comes with a healthy disregard for glitzy gadgets or pointless decoration. Consequently, we spared the usual interactivity to create a show for the DAM that is to be walked about and observed.

The red entrance wall is a shadow-play with the schneider+schumacher logo projected by one red and one red inverted projector. Normally, the logo is barely visible; only the shadows of the visitors form the typography as they pass the cones of one, but not the other projector.

Behind the scenes

Making-of

Exhibitions on architecture are typically a little low on budget, so creating a high-quality panorama more than 26 m long was still quite a technical challenge money-wise. We like challenges and came up with a system of 21 office-grade video projectors fed by four computers and made sure that the architects’ team was able to do much of the work on the vvvv-based animations (courtesy of media-jack-of-all-trades Ragunath Vasudevan) themselves.