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Published on March 6, 2008

Britons Stephen Greenberg and Peter Mercer are among the world's 25 or so top designers of museums and public exhibitions, and both were in Bangkok the other day sharing their ideas.

The biggest idea of all is a multi-sensory, "immersive" museum experience based not so much on the way things are displayed as it is conveying their meaning and importance.

Greenberg heads Metaphor, a company that specialises in setting up exhibitions and planning museums and heritage centres. He's currently working on the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, which is set to open in 2010.

The founder of Newangle Productions, Mercer is a specialist in interactive and audio-visual media for museums.

Greenberg's Egyptian Museum will be among the world's biggest at 75,000 square metres, of which 24,000sqm is exhibition space - equivalent to six football fields. That kind of room is no doubt needed to illustrate 3,500 years of ancient history, initially using 50,000 artefacts and ultimately 100,000.

"It's a hugely important project for the Egyptian government in terms of national pride, identity and its connection with its own past," Greenberg said.

"I've been working on the project for three years, and it's been a privilege. The museum is beautifully shaped, with big walls. It has the size and shape of Victoria Railway Station in London."

He envisions a compelling atmosphere with areas reminiscent of archaeological digs, all arranged chronologically and thematically - except for some highlighted elements - with different colours and hieroglyphs identifying the various kingdoms.

In the museum, Greenberg said, the stones of the dig sites can be reunited with the gold and other treasures extracted from among them.

"You walk through and we've got temples, tombs, showcases with objects, steps. We've created an archaeological feel inside the building. It's the whole of Egyptian archaeology under one roof."

Working on foreign exhibitions requires a good understanding of the local cultural issues, Mercer noted. The challenge is in grasping the story behind the collections and expressing it correctly.

"I want to enable the visitor to come away with more than they arrive with. I want the visitor to identify with the situation and the environment, or I want to take an object out of the glass case, so the visitor can 'interrogate' it, learn more about it. If you can get the story of that collection, it will work, no matter which country you're working in."

Culture is the key to a good exhibition design, Mercer said. He once designed a show in India and, since most visitors were illiterate, he opted for interactive media instead of text panels.

Greenberg and Mercer collaborated on "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army", now on view at the British Museum in London.

Greenberg saw himself as a film director while Mercer was in charge of the camera work and lighting.

Arrayed in the dome of the museum's reading room, the exhibition sits inside a jade ring, the Chinese symbol of the universe.

"The dome has the exact dimensions of the Pantheon in Rome," Greenberg said. "So this is one universe - the Chinese universe - inserted inside the Pantheon, which is the Western universe. The two models meet in that library.

"This exhibition in a way transcends cultures. It's one architecture inside another and it got incredible objects."

To make the show fully understandable, Greenberg placed banners explaining key facts from the emperor's biography outside where visitors queue up.

Making sure viewers can learn about each item's context - rather than simply noting its appearance - is crucial in designing cross-cultural exhibitions, said Mercer.

Visitors should be able to "explore" the object, drill down and find out more, he said. Greenberg emphasised the use of stories and graphics to create a complete narrative environment, so that touring the museum feels like walking through a movie.

"People want a snapshot of what the object is, how it was used, where it came from," Mercer concurred. "That's what I see myself as doing, and it adds to the quality of the experience."

Designers, said Greenberg, "will help you best tell your story and then we will look for things in the story, whether it be phenomenon of archaeology or the colour of the art, to help you express your story".

Both men play down their nationality when working overseas. The accent, they said, must be on the place and culture at hand.

"We want to make it look as if it comes out of the place as much as possible," Greenberg said. "I don't want to feel like we've flown in with our products.  People buy a global product because it's a global product. The new Norman Foster airport is a beautiful Norman Foster airport, and it's still a global product."

Manote Tripathi

The Nation