Share to
Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History
By : Ralph Appelbaum Associates
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 17th edition
Discipline : Interior Design
Categories : Culture, Sport & Leisure / Museum & Gallery : Gold Certification
We won the competition for the redesign of the Evolution and Ocean Halls for the Rosenstein Museum of the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart. Over two years, we created two immersive interactive rooms, which set the foundation for the revision of the rest of the permanent exhibition.
Both halls are characterized by unique large-scale objects that can only be exhibited in these two halls. The Ocean Hall is dominated by a 13-meter-long model of a female sei whale, while the Evolution Hall includes the taxidermy of an African elephant bull, as well as a skeleton of a European forest elephant that died about 100,000 years ago.
For the Ocean Hall, our design reinforces the already existing character as an “experience space” of the underwater world. We did this through a blue darkening of the room, water movements visible over large areas on the new acoustic ceiling, suspended models and taxidermy of marine and coastal animals, the large diorama of a coral reef and a black smoker, and a full wall graphic with marine scenes on three sides of the walls.
The Evolution Hall explores evolutionary relationships and processes. In the center of the room stands an interactive media table, around which six thematic islands are grouped, with large-format primate-like vitrines giving room to real-life looking taxidermy specimens, and via a long so-called mediation belt with many interactives, infographics, and hands-on objects, highlighting aspects of evolutionary processes and the influence of humans.
Collaboration
