“We wanted to give people the feeling of being in a contemporary warehouse or the private chambers of an 18th – century aristocratic family rat her than in a museum, while shrinking the distance between the visitor and the object. The most wonderful part of the project is to help people to participate and perceive the history in an unexpected and unpretentious way.” Ma rtin Lesjak – Co – Founder, Design Director

The client, a public institution in the Austrian region, Styria, needed a fresh concept for the History Museum’s exhibitions and its entrance, housed within a significan t historic building at Graz’s city center. The task was to present an enormous number of objects acquired since the Middle Ages and multimedia archives of the 20th century in an historic space that required careful treatment.

The concept is based on a jour ney through “Schaudepot,” an exhibition depot, divided into two parts – the Cultural History Collection and the Multimedia Collection. The first section presents the diversity of physical objects that reflects the use of industrial material with less custo mization while providing mult ifunctional and freely adaptable displays for various shapes and sizes allowing visitors to experience the historic space from an unexpected seamless perspective. The second part showcases multimedia archives enabling deep insi ghts into the dispersed depot character with tailored scenography which leads through its genesis. The exhibition, “100 x Styria” placed in the outstanding historic mirror hall, articulates spatial intervention in both functional and artistic ways. Relatin g to the concept of a “laid t able of history,” the furniture – like installations made of glass or mirror reflect the historic use of these chambers. The space, furniture, objects, and visitors merge into one another as one medium and raise questions: “What is forthcoming? What remains? ”

 

 

HISTORY MUSEUM GRAZ
Authors: INNOCAD architecture
Investor: Universalmuseum Joanneum
Photos: Paul Ott
Year of completion: 2017
Location: Graz, Austria
Total area: 832 m2