Share to
En d’dans
By : B Architecture
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 15th edition
Discipline : Interior Design
Categories : Culture, Sport & Leisure / Museum & Gallery : Gold Certification
Categories : Special Awards / Heritage Preservation : Platinum Winner, Gold Certification
Categories : Special Awards / Interior Design + Collaboration : Gold Certification
After many years of offering guided tours in the company of former inmates, the POP Museum was looking to enhance the Trois-Rivières Old Prison tour. While preserving the unique human approach of the experience, the institution’s intent was to add a didactical component, allowing to discover the historical and social reality of the Quebec custodial setting through a new permanent exhibit.
Our proposal: an experience combining a historical and immersive visit of Old Prison heritage building (In the Big House: Encounters Behind Bars) and an interactive and reflective exhibit inside the museum (In the Big House: Prisons, a Solution?).
In the Big House: Encounters Behind Bars
The aim of this new visit is to bring the custodial experience to the visitors through the lives of characters from various times who actually resided in the prison. May it be in the shoes of a 1950 prison guard, a prisoners from 1960, a governor from 1930 or an intervenor from 1980, the visitor will truly experience being “in the big house” with an itinerary where original testimonies and genuine equipment complete each other, including carefully selected artefacts and iconographies.
About the scenography, the experience will adjust according to the character and time choice by an adaptation of the general ambiance, as much with the lighting colors as with the sound and narrative tracks. Guiding the visitor, a directional signage system, laid out as a ribbon through the premises, presents the thematic layout, determined in accordance with the old prison wings.
While respecting the place and with a desire to revive the 19th century building, various multimedia and graphic installations are included in the circuit, featuring a hologram, video projections and soundscapes. For all the interventions, the selected materiality reinvents, with a contemporary design, the original materials.
In the Big House: Prisons, a Solution?
At the exhibit’s entrance, the visitor receives a bracelet equipped with a key. The latter will allow the visitor, through the visit, to make a stand on subjects about the history and foundations of the Quebec custodial setting.
At the center of the room, an interactive and reactive digital work of art is unfolded, contrasting by its luminosity and light materiality in a purposely dark and rigid space. The visitor is invited to enter and, with the key, to check in in one of the touchscreen terminals to share opinions and thus see the visuals projected around the room come to life.
The circuit’s and space’s spatial conception integrates the presentation of artefacts and iconographies, but also many interactive analog and thematic digital stations. Addressing a great variety of visitors, the presentation strategies of the contents range from the possibility to consult actual criminal and legal files, to reflect on prison architecture or even compare the prisoners’ food over the years through playful and interactive analog stations.
Inspired by the Old Prison and in keeping with the historical tour, the materiality and graphic design selected for the exhibit reinterpret the languages and textures specific to the custodial setting, going from the bar to the grid through wall graffiti.
Collaboration
