.bubbles

Temporary exhibition exploring sensory activation in response to nature deficit disorder.

Context

Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD) is growing as humans now spend 90% of their time indoors. With the global population becoming increasingly urbanised, 10% of children today do not have any nature-based play or immersion in nature at all during the year.

Bubbles is a pop-up exhibition designed to engage children of all abilities with nature and is set in a large suburban shopping centre.

The motivation to transform this retail space is to subvert consumeristic culture and use it to develop a stronger connection to nature. Continual fixation on growth and consumption contributes to the wicked environmental problems facing the Earth.

The overall design is conceived as a slice through a wave crashing on the beach. The visitor experience is inviting the user in from being lost at sea, drowning in consumerism and disconnection, and washing them up onto the playful beach.
This installation consists of two zones with exhibit tanks and a connecting interactive digital projection pathway. Within each zone there are three exhibits that activate the senses with a dominant sense being present for each exhibit.
Research into contemporary temporary exhibitions informed the layout, while the strong constraints of the centre’s pop-up planning document guided the exhibit tanks themselves.
The narrative for each tank was developed by focusing on how traditionally sight dominant aquarium tanks can be activated for the other senses.
The exhibit designs themselves focused on reducing waste during production by standardising sizes to sheet materials. Overall exhibit designs were also constrained by the size of a regular shipping container to ensure that the overall exhibition was able to be easily packed and moved.
The exhibit designs were adjusted to ensure compliance with Australian Standards for Access and Mobility (AS1428.1 and 1428.2). The final spatial activation ensured the space was inclusive and accessible.
This project documentation was realized through extensive image collage processes.
The shopping centre layout was documented and drawn in Revit. The exhibition tanks were drafted as a series of families to allow for extensive design iterations during the layout.
The model was imported into Twinmotion for material application (including several custom materials) and the images were rendered out with entourage and without.
Sectional and elevation images from Revit also underwent processing in Photoshop to better define the exhibition within the shopping centre context.
Exhibit level manufacturing details were also drafted in Revit to inform the design thinking around the temporary and transportable nature of the exhibition. The collage images were re-imported onto sheets in Revit to produce a uniform and refined documentation set.
For the full technical drawing package click here.