Expert’s Corner – The role of architecture and exhibition design in museums
Museums are evolving into vibrant hubs where community, learning, and interaction intertwine, offering enriching and dynamic experiences for all visitors.
For this new Expert’s corner, Junia Jorgji, Director of Special Projects at France Muséums and formerly Chief of Design at the National Gallery of Canada, explores how design-led thinking and processes can redefine visitor experience.
She highlights how architecture and design can create inclusive, flexible, and dynamic environments that foster lasting connections between museums and their audiences.
The role of museum professionals today
Museum professionals, both in-house and external, are responsible for creating and activating spaces that engage visitors, display art, host programs, and make space for questioning and learning. However, museums and the experts that help them develop and operate have an obligation towards their community and their visitors: they must leverage their expertise to create empathetic, visitor-centered experiences.
As Lisa Havilah, CEO of Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, stated, “I am a servant of the public.” Professional expertise is therefore not applied in a vacuum, but rather is used to elevate visitor experiences within cultural spaces, by understanding and responding to the audience’s needs and creating spaces that resonate with and engage the audience.
One of the most effective ways to create engaging visitor experiences is through design-led innovation.
Extended design teams, incorporating various design disciplines must serve as the primary incubators of visitor-centric design and innovation in museums and cultural spaces, and must be involved early in the process, to guarantee vision alignment from inception to delivery.
I began my professional museum journey 15 years ago in the education team and later transitioned to the exhibition design team at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, an international museum and research center based in Montreal, home to one of the largest collections of architectural archives and books in the world. It was founded by Phyllis Lambert, a visionary thinker and leader, who was instrumental in introducing influential figures like Mies van der Rohe to North America, among many other contributions. This early training has profoundly shaped my understanding and appreciation of museums today. It taught me to view museums as spaces that inspire dialogue, innovation, and a deeper understanding of the built environment and its impact on society, through its exhibitions, education and public programming, but also through the physical spaces and experiences that are created to house the curatorial discourse. The symbiotic relationship between physical experience and content allows for a perfect synergy, enhancing the visitor experience.
Museum architecture as a lever for visitor engagement
Today’s museum should be envisioned as a dynamic, social space fostering community engagement and interaction. Designing areas for social gatherings, education programs, and events, can transform museums into vibrant cultural and societal hubs, deeply embedded within their community, meant to cultivate a sense of belonging, encouraging repeat visitors.
The architecture of a museum or cultural site profoundly impacts the visitor experience by shaping how visitors engage with the space. When designing or transforming museum buildings, from the site and grounds to the building proper, it is crucial to ensure that the design aligns with the museum’s functional and operational requirements, which in turn must be developed thoughtfully, with the visitor at the forefront. Circulation should facilitate intuitive navigation rather than relying on wayfinding, gathering or event spaces should create moments of excitement and respite, and accessibility and the elimination of visitor fatigue should be ensured.
A user-centric design approach must not only apply to front-of-house functions, but also extend to back-of-house areas, such as conservation labs, administrative functions, and technical areas.
Exhibition design as a lever for experience creation
Running in parallel to architecture, exhibition design is a comprehensive, integrated, and multidisciplinary discipline that seeks to convey information through visual storytelling and environmental design. It combines architecture, interior design, graphic design, interpretation, experience and interaction design, multimedia and technology, lighting, and audio to create multi-layered narratives.
Exhibition designers collaborate closely with curatorial and conservation teams to make artworks, objects and stories come to life in three-dimensional spaces meant to be experienced physically, be they thematically organised, chronologically, or both. As such, exhibition designers have a significant responsibility, as they straddle both the art historic or curatorial world and the visitor or end-user world. They must create with empathy and an understanding of the visitor, focusing on the user experience, with accessibility being of the utmost importance.
This mention of accessibility encompasses not only the built environment, such as spatial planning, furniture, and cases, but also the mood set by lighting, the didactic content, and interactive experiences. The spatial manifestation of visitor experience begins at the museum grounds and continues through every visual or experiential point of contact.
However, visitor engagement extends beyond the physical space, continuing off-site, where the memory of the visitor’s physical experience at the museum lingers, and they engage with the cultural institution online or in print. In these instances, cohesive messaging, strong communication, and consistent visual design elements must tie the entire experience together to create an experience for the visitor that lasts beyond the museum’s exit way.
Beyond visitor experience, a safe and conservation-appropriate display of artworks, considering environmental factors, such as temperature, humidity, and lighting must be considered. Designing cases and exhibition spaces that both showcase and protect the integrity of the artworks is key. Incorporating eco-friendly materials, and energy-efficient, modular, and reusable construction and display systems is essential, as sustainability is a priority across all spheres of society, and culture is no exception.
Museum architecture and exhibition design trends
As the global trend in museum practices is shifting towards an even more collaborative approach, where visitor experience is key, museums are evolving from static, object-based spaces into dynamic “third spaces” for gatherings, cultural events, entertainment, and creativity. Flexible and polyvalent spaces are becoming more common.
These types of spaces also require new collaborative design approaches, allowing room for creative design solutions that are innovative and experimental, delivering solutions that are unique and outside the box, captivating and engaging visitors and audiences, and encouraging repeat visitors.
By embracing their role –to be at the service of the visitor– museums can remain relevant and vibrant in a rapidly changing world. Ultimately, the goal is to create spaces and experiences that not only educate, but also inspire, and build long and lasting connections with the community they inhabit and all who visit them. The museum of tomorrow is celebratory, eye-opening, playful, but also dynamic, intended to continuously evolve and adapt itself.
France Muséums assists decision-makers in defining, planning and implementing their cultural strategy. We guide our clients in the elaboration of the architectural programme to ensure that the building and its spaces fully respond to the required functions. We place the visitor at the heart of our reflections, so as to design coherent spaces that offer an appealing and accessible visitor experience.
