40 DESIGNER FILE 40
Above Bespoke seating for Lifeblood at Munch positions the visitor in unusual ways
approach seems to recognise that proximity cultivates rather than diminishes respect; that when we’re granted the power to touch, we often choose not to. In a recent Frieze article, Tim Reeve, deputy director of the V&A, spoke about purposefully revealing the hidden mechanisms of the museum, letting backstage become front-of-house, embracing a museum embedded in the life of the city. His words felt like a rallying cry: an invitation to museums everywhere to think more boldly, break down inherited conventions, and reconsider what openness really looks like. Te ability to summon objects, to study them in close quarters, shifts agency back to the viewer. It builds intimacy and it says that you belong here. It almost feels as if the building is being shaped by the visitors. We are also in our work trying to find ways in which we can disarm the visitor to challenge their physical relationship with the works. In Lifeblood at the Munch museum in Oslo – an exhibition about medicine, caregiving and the changes that this went through within Munch’s lifetime – we created furniture that positions the visitor in different ways, whether upright, supported and close-up to the works, or lying in a protective curve reflecting on the objects and artworks. Tis journey supports and transforms us out of the gallery into a more intimate environment.
So, where do we go from here? Is there a
future in which care and closeness coexist and where museums safeguard without ruining the experience, where objects are held tenderly but not separately? Trough clever layering, non-reflective glass, sensory design, and material honesty, perhaps we can build spaces that breathe and where connection doesn’t require detachment? Where some things are protected, but others are sacrificial, designed to be touched, altered, weathered by human hands. Where the patina of time becomes part of the object’s story. Maybe we commission new objects that are born to be held, to be worn down. Maybe we soften the edges between viewer and collection, between permanence and decay. We might not be able to immerse our treasures in the river, as they do in Kolkata, but perhaps we can loosen our grip a little. Create room for touch, for risk, for feeling. Let our museums become places not just of preservation, but of presence, spaces where people come not just to look, but to connect, to remember, and to let go.
Pippa Nissen is a director and founder of Nissen Richards Studio, winners of over 50 creative awards for the practice’s prestigious, international portfolio of exhibition design and architectural projects
PHOTO: GARETH GARDNER
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