Rethinking Museum Space: Interaction Between Spatial Layout Design and Digital Sensory Environments

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been a growing awareness of architectural and spatial design \nin the functioning of museums and the creation of distinctive visitor experiences. This issue has \nitself become more complex as digital technologies offer new potentials to mediate between \nmuseum content and visitors, and in particular technologies which have the capacity to amplify \nsenses and facilitate interactive, whole body, immersive and sensorial experience. The paper will \nexplore for the first time the role of spatial layout in the sensory environments created through \ndigital media in museums. Among the key questions raised are: how are they integrated into the \nmuseum itinerary spatially and conceptually? In what kind of spaces are they installed and how \ndo they relate to them? Are they arranged so as to exploit key spatial properties? We investigate \nthese questions initially through the identification and review of existing experimental projects, \nand then through the in-depth study of examples of the museum work of two well-established \ncreative studios which combine architecture and interaction: Jason Bruges Studio and United \nVisual Artists. The analysis is based, on the one hand, on interviews with the designers involved \nin their creation and, on the other, on syntactic concepts and techniques. By looking in parallel \nat the work of the two studios, from their first installations until now, and through syntactic \nanalysis, we unravel the way these projects become integrated in the museum, both in literal \nterms (spatial positioning) and in metaphorical (curatorial practice). The analysis shows that as \nthese works become with time more symbolic, they also become less intrinsically spatial and \ntheir experience less dependent on movement. More interestingly, it brings to surface aspects \nof the design of digital sensory environments which have a relation of correspondence with \nsyntactic properties, such as integration, and types of space. Having shown that space plays \na key but variable role, the paper ends by proposing a model for the spatial understanding of \nthese novel technology-mediated experiences and for rethinking museum space.

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