Pointe-à-Callière: Crossroads, Building Montréal, Snow

My final post about the Montréal museums I saw during my visit to the city in September 2015 — see also the Insectarium, the Biodôme, and Lazy Love at the Biodôme — here’s a look back at Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal’s Archeology and History Complex.

The Pointe-à-Callière complex is built on archeological sites that span the city’s history. Exploring the museum is very interesting, and a lot of fun — you take passageways, bridges, and stairs over and through the archeological remains. Like the museum building itself, which was built on pilings to protect the site, exhibition elements tread lightly among the artifacts, and visitors are asked repeatedly via signage not to touch the remains. Like most places in Montréal, museum graphics are in French with English translations. I like the way the two languages are interwoven on the red lobby banner above.

The permanent exhibition in the basement, Crossroads Montréal, takes you through 1,000 years of the city’s remains, including the first Catholic cemetery (dating from 1643), and the foundation of the Royal Insurance Building (dating from 1861). Excavations continue and more exhibitions are planned to interpret what is unearthed. On the one hand: very cool premise, and very cool space to explore. On the other, I had trouble getting and keeping my bearings. Perhaps because the graphics didn’t hold my attention? The ruins themselves were more intriguing.

I would have liked more information directed at the museum “streakers” like myself: the people who move quickly through exhibitions, and only read titles and very selective [random] bits and pieces of labels. (On my best days, I can be a “stroller.”) Perhaps a printed guide map would have helped me to understand where I was within the museum and what I was looking at. Perhaps I should have taken a guided tour.

I did like the graphics’ integration into the museum’s building structure, particularly the ceilings, and the minimalist construction-site aesthetic of their structures. Artifact cases, too, were carefully integrated into the site.

Most graphics were rear-illuminated, which worked perfectly with the museum’s underground atmosphere.

Also below-ground is the Building Montréal exhibition, where you’ll find the museum’s archeological crypt. The photos below are of the vaulted stone tunnel built on the bed of the Saint-Pierre River. See what I mean about the museum being fun to explore?

Set into the floor of Building Montréal are more than a dozen dioramas that show the city at different points in time. I love this use of space, and the vantage point it gives visitors. (I wrote this post about exhibition flooring, seven years ago, and Bridget mentioned the Pointe-à-Callière in the comments. I finally saw it for myself!)

At the time, the museum also had a temporary exhibit on view called Snow, a fun look at winter culture in Canada. Notice the snowflakes cut from the apron fronts of reader rails!

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 25 March 2017.

Space for Life, part 1: Biodôme

Back in September 2015, I spent a handful of days in Montréal. I visited a few museums, but at the time, I only gave one temporary exhibition at the Biodôme brief mention on this blog. This happens all the time — I take photos everywhere I go, and then I just sit on them.… So let’s dust off those photos (or pretend it’s September 2015), and visit the Biodôme.

The Biodôme is part of a museum complex called Espace Pour La Vie (“Space for Life”) that also includes the Insectarium, Jardin botanique (botanical gardens), and Planétarium. You can buy combination admission tickets and pick which you would like to visit. The largest exhibition, and primary draw, within the Biodôme is Ecosystems of the Americas. (But don’t miss the Insectarium!) The Ecosystems exhibition is broken into four ecosystems conveyed by immersive landscaping, climate, and live vegetation and wildlife. For example — the air inside the Tropical Rainforest ecosystem is warm and muggy, while inside the Sub-Antarctic Islands ecosystem it is decidedly chilly.

Inside the Tropical Rainforest you walk through mature and secondary forests, and pass a waterfall, lake, river, cliffs, and caves. Graphics throughout are minimal, restricted to brief labels and occasional monitors. Like most places in Montréal, text is in French, with English translations.

Charming illustrations and species’ statuses are available in the free Identification Guide.

Inside the cave you’ll find terrarium-dwellers and nocturnal-types; these graphics were all rear-illuminated, and included a bit more information than graphics in the Rainforest:

Moving along, you reach the Laurentian Maple Forest. At the entrance to each ecosystem you are greeted by a large wall mural: a collage of color-saturated photos, clean-lined vector illustrations, and a where-in-the-world diagram.

Maintaining the minimal aesthetic throughout, there are still elements of whimsy, such as photos of playful otters applied to the glass wall of their enclosure. Wayfinding elements also show up on the floor, and on support columns.

Downstairs, there are a couple of small exhibitions: the Naturalia Room, which is directed toward children, and a temporary exhibition, which at the time was The Fossil Affair.

Overall, the Biodôme was a fun museum to visit, and the immersive ecosystems were well-done.

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 14 March 2017.

California Academy of Sciences, part 2: color and quakes

If forced to choose, my favorite part of the California Academy of Sciences would be the Rainforest Dome — check out Part 1 of my visit — but there were many other fascinating exhibitions to enjoy, including Color of Life: Discover Nature's Secret Language, designed by the museum’s Exhibits Studio and opened last year.

The exhibition uses bright, bold colors, beautiful photographs, and accessible writing to “reveal the significant roles color plays across a spectrum of species.”

Within the 8,000 square foot exhibition are immersive interactive experiences, including a musical color visualizer, designed by Tellart. Video screens respond to strings, plucked by visitors, with a show of images and videos related to that string’s color.

Another popular interactive experience is the “Courtship Dance Stage.”

Throughout the exhibition are dioramas and small interactives that allow you to see organisms under different types of lighting, or through the eyes of other animals (just for example).

Also 8,000 square feet in size, the older (circa-2012) exhibition, Earthquake: Life of a Dynamic Planet, explores the seismic science of Earth’s geologic transformations through installations such as a 25-foot-wide, walk-through model of Earth, and the immersive “Shake House.”

Other sections of the Earthquake exhibit focus on the diverse life forms that evolved and spread as Pangaea split up, and earthquake preparedness.

There are mini-exhibits throughout the museum, including a show of Andy Warhol’s Endangered Species series of silkscreen prints, from 1983. In 2007 the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list; the other featured animals remain.

Other mini-exhibits focused on variation, in ladybugs and in humans. 

Rounding out my visit, I strolled through the Human Odyssey exhibition, an exploration of the origins of humankind, and the African Hall, home to classic, stuffy, stuffed-animal dioramas (and live penguins).

I highly recommend this museum — it’s beautifully designed, fascinating, and educational. I also recommend you consider picking up a City Pass if you plan to visit more than one museum. They are expensive in San Francisco — said from DC, where the museums are mostly free.

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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 3 October 2016.

California Academy of Sciences, part 1: rainforests and reefs

I wrapped up June — oh, wow it’s August! — with a trip to Yosemite (happy birthday, National Park Service) and San Francisco, where I spent a day parade-watching and a couple days museum-going.

One museum that filled nearly an entire day was the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Below is a photo of the museum’s exterior and its brilliant Living Roof, as seen from the de Young Museum.

There are so many exhibits within “the Academy” (and so many photos to show) that I’ve broken this post into two parts. Part 1 here covers the Aquarium on the lower level, designed by Thinc Design, and the Rainforest on Level 1.

After entering the museum I was swept up with the crowds heading to the 4-story, 90-foot-diameter Rainforest Dome. Inside, the rainforest visit begins on a Bornean forest floor, winds upward through a Madagascan mid-story and a Costa Rican canopy, then ends on the lower level in an Amazonian flooded forest.

As a designer, I liked the dome’s juxtaposition of glass and steel and abstracted jungle motifs against living flora and fauna, and the changing vistas as I moved further up the dome. As a nature enthusiast, I enjoyed its subject matter; as a weary museum visitor, I appreciated its delivery: not too much, not too little; brief, interesting, and useful.

The bright, straightforward graphics make use of vivid photographs, and the occasional illustration of an animal signals your arrival in a new area of the jungle. Bamboo- or vine-like vertical posts give a stylized–naturalistic element to exhibit tanks. The light touch with exhibit elements gives the rainforest dome a feeling of exploration and discovery (just ignore the school groups).

At the top of the dome, look out over the three stories you’ve just visited, and down, through a 100,000 gallon tank, to the flooded forest floor. Take an elevator down, then enter the tunnel you were just looking through from afar. Everyone says “oooh.”

The aquarium level felt jam-packed and massive; it’s where I spent most of my time during a 3 hour + visit. There were many exhibitions to see: Amazon Flooded Forest, Water Planet, California Coast, Coral Reefs of the World, Twilight Zone, and more.

Down here, animal identification is found on digital touchscreens. They were intuitive and fun to use, and had just the right amount of information: an animal’s common name, its scientific name, diet, and a one-sentence fact about it.

Below are some photos of the Water Planet exhibition, which groups underwater animals by adaptations. Projected blue and green lighting casts an underwater glow on the sculptural wave walls (similar material here). In the center of the room are curvilinear tanks. (I was reminded of the Van Cleef & Arpels traveling exhibition, circa 2012. It must be the bubbles.)

The highlight of the Coral Reefs of the World exhibition is the 25-foot deep Philippine Coral Reef tank (above). The exhibit graphics in this area are large image-based wallpapers.

The exhibition Twilight Zone: Deep Reefs Revealed had just opened on June 10. It’s memorable for its tanks filled with the most incredible jellies and vivid deep sea fishes.

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 23 August 2016.

I love the Infantry Museum

I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.

— Ernie Pyle

This past week I went down to Columbus, Georgia to see Christopher Chadbourne & Associates’s National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning. I worked on this project as a junior designer — I helped to finalize design drawings and produced final graphic design files. (Brent Johnson was the lead exhibit designer, and Jeff Stammen the lead graphic designer.) I suppose I cut my exhibit design teeth on this one. I learned SO MUCH about the design process while working on this. And I know all these graphics so well — it’s thrilling to see them realized, and in person. It was an honor to work on this museum.

Post updated in January 2021. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 2 May 2010.

The scariest thing about Eastern State Penitentiary

The scariest thing about Eastern State Penitentiary … is surely not the daffodils growing outside its walls.

It calls itself “America’s Most Historic Prison.” The Library of Congress writes in this photo survey, “It was elected to the World Monuments List in 1996 as one of the world’s 100 most endangered monuments. Eastern State Penitentiary is an internationally significant landmark which has directly influenced the design of 300 prisons on four continents and inspired an ongoing conversation about architecture and social control.”

ESP has a fascinating history. It closed as a prison in 1971, and remained abandoned (save for a family of feral cats) until 1994. In 1994 the tour program started and stabilization projects were initiated to maintain the prison as a “semi-ruin.” These stabilization projects were to “stop the deterioration and to make the tour route safe for visitors” and some projects restored areas (such as Al Capone’s cell) to how they looked at specific times in the building’s history. It makes for interesting juxtapositions of ruin/19th or 20th century prison design.

The penitentiary is open every day of the year and offers a number of themed tours. I would recommend that you explore on your own (on-your-own-with-a-friend I mean). Much like at the Ether Dome in Boston (post and photos, here) quiet and solitude enhance the experience. With that said, the free audio tour is worth picking up: it’s interesting and it is narrated by Steve Buscemi.

So is this place scary? I visited late on a chilly and overcast March day and rarely crossed paths with the few other visitors there. The photos I took certainly make the place look sinister, right? Above on the left is Cell Block 1, one of the originals from 1829. To the right, Death Row (Cell Block 15), built in 1959. Below is Cell Block 14. The sign reads “Is Eastern State Penitentiary Haunted?” (The short answer: yes.)

But I was going to tell you the scariest thing about Eastern State Penitentiary. I’d have to say it’s these pink exhibit graphics. Update, 2021: ESP has more recent exhibits whose design is more fitting to the environment.

Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 10 April 2010.

The News 02.02.10

A compilation of design-related web finds.

FREE Day at Mass MoCA | “When you’ve hit that saturation point and your attention wanes, go gladly home. Take your joyful experience and be thankful for it.” (How to Go to the Zoo) | And with that — zoos and aquaria are excluded from accessing funds in the recently-passed House version of the “Jobs for Main Street Act” (H.R. 2847, Sec. 1702) | Ideum released an open-source gesture library for Flash multitouch development | Sync/Lost is a multi-user audio-visual installation for exploring the history of electronic music and the relationships amongst its sub-genres | From Lunar, The Designer’s Field Guide to Sustainability; “materials, processes and resources that will lessen the impact of products on our ecosystem” | Metal foam | We Love Typography | Diana Larrea’s installations | Pentagram’s new identity for the North Carolina Museum of Art — I love it | Pole Dance by SO-IL for P.S.1’s Young Architects Program.

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Post updated in January 2021 with minor text edits. Broken links have been fixed, replaced, or replaced with archived URLs, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 2 February 2010.