QUONSET: METAL LIVING FOR
A MODERN AGE
Exhibition Design, Fabrication, and Installation
Anchorage Museum
of History and Art
October 16, 2005 through
January 1, 2006
5000 sq. ft.
This traveling exhibition featured the Quonset hut, a mass-produced, prefabricated shelter created to house troops and supplies during WWII. The project required designing an informational and visually dynamic environment to display images and objects with a very specific and repetitive focus, with the possibility of being reconfigured for subsequent venues.
Arranged in formation, the exhibition’s system took their cue from the utilitarian, deployable metal folding chair, and the distinctive arc of the Quonset hut itself – with the effect of curving material closer to the viewer. A set of interlocking, interchangeable, and standardized parts was economically mass-produced by laser-cutting and bending flat steel, allowing the exhibition to be shipped in the smallest of containers and erected on site in the span of two days. Each system component acts as an integral structural member to the assembly, creating a rigid armature out of a minimum of finely sized pieces. Custom spring clips buckle 1/4” masonite display panels snug to the structure’s radius.
In part replicating the deployment of the original Quonset, the exhibition was fabricated within six weeks in MATTER’s shop and shipped via truck and barge to Alaska. The entire show was mounted on a new painted floor raised up on recycled shipping pallets (in part to conceal egregious museum carpeting) and ringed by concealed fluorescent fixtures with ice blue gels evoking the Alaskan horizon. Custom pendant lighting was installed to lower the gallery’s ceiling plane, emphasizing a wide space and transforming the typical environment of the Museum.
