State Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art at the Humboldt Forum

Discipline : Interior Design

Categories : Culture, Sport & Leisure / Museum & Gallery : Gold Certification

Located in the reconstructed Berlin Palace on Berlin’s Museum Island, the newly opened Humboldt Forum is envisioned as an international forum of art, culture and science. Comprising over 170,000 square feet over two whole floors of the building, the permanent exhibitions of State Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art present Germany’s most comprehensive non-European collections — unique artistic and cultural artifacts from Africa, Asia, America and Oceania. Thematic exhibition modules, family areas, activity rooms, listening spaces, multimedia installations and visible study collections provide a multifaceted stage to engage in active dialogue with and between the world’s cultures, to engage in a proactive dialog about the history and provenance of collections, and to celebrate the diversity of human experience and achievements.

The collections of the Ethnology Museum and the Museum of Asian Art occupy over half of the Humboldt Forum’s entire interior area and form the heart of this new institution. Far more than an aesthetic display of some 24,000 historic objects, the exhibitions were designed as a dynamic platform for intercultural discourse around historic and contemporary events and ideas.

While our primary task was to design for the initial installations, including all casework design and detailing, our design also deliberately set the stage for change, through the future incorporation of new exhibitions and interventions and public programs. The exhibition installation is thus not an iconic edifice, but seen rather as a framework for an ongoing process.

The exhibitions are organized by continents and geographical regions for the visitors’ overall sense of orientation. Within these regions, the exhibitions are thematically curated—40 distinct exhibitions each with their own curatorial concept. The whole exhibition is thus decisively not encyclopedic, multifaceted and also non-linear.

The project also required close collaboration and technical coordination with the curators. Within the museum’s collections, an extremely wide range of materials and art objects (permanent/large and small) required a deep understanding of their aesthetics and their conservation requirements. Discussions with curators allowed for a design that had as a goal not only the conservation and aesthetic appreciation of the collections, but also flexibility and the ability to frequently change the presentation of objects.

For this project, over 530 speciality showcases were designed according to German State Museum Standards for conservation and all showcase materials were “Oddy” tested and as well as “Bemma” – certified. We also designed over 12,000 object mounts which can be adapted to each object’s specific presentation requirements. Visible study collections areas are fitted out with large scale flexible showcases for displaying the mass and breadth of collections and media stations for in-depth study.

The project provides a captivating and emotionally engaging immersive stage for flexible and adaptive messaging, able to connect deeply and emotionally into cultural heritages while also addressing contemporary perspectives and topics. Since its second partial opening in September 2021 under restrictive COVID-pandemic conditions with limited timed ticket entry, the Humboldt Forum in the first 3 months had already received over 100,000 visitors.

The project in images