GREEN COMMUNITY
Exhibition Design and Fabrication
In Progress
National Building Museum
Opening October 2008
4000 sq. ft.
The third in a series on sustainability produced by the NBM focusing entirely on green developments.
As simultaneous strategies are often employed to realize environmental sustainability, we reconsidered the given exhibition structure catagorizing content through the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water - looking instead to René Dubos’ maxim to ‘think globally, act locally’ for an initial approach.
We are inspired by larger definitions of community, from the scale of digital communication networks to the near atomic community of the life cells that make up who we are. The exhibition galleries are interpreted as one microcosmic environment affording different conditions and opportunities - solar power for the exhibition is harnessed from south-facing windows.
Further inspiration is drawn from ice core drillings, current research illuminating more about our climatic history than was ever previously known. A time/core organizing historic factoids runs the length of the gallery, connecting mirrored end surfaces that visually extend space infinitely in both directions. Sample communities, exemplary of technological or social innovation, are presented within 'petri dishes' isolated and magnified for analysis.
Content is presented on back-lit clear plastic manufactured from recycled soda bottles, encapsulating the social, political, and physical systems that structure green communities. Small media displays will be threaded throughout, rendering abstract data tangible and dynamic, linking communities, ideas, and by necessity us all.
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