Museum of Communication

This week we start with installation of the Museum of Communication, Switzerland. The museum will reopen to the public this summer after a year of major renovations.

We were selected by the Museum of Communication for the large-scale renovation of the permanent exhibition of the museum. Kossmann.dejong won the assignment to design the new large survey exhibition. The museum aspires to continue the trend of soaring visitor numbers and to enhance the leading position in museum attendance of young people.

Communication connects people and brings people together. We convey our message, consciously or subconsciously, all the time. Communication is in other words a very interesting topic for a museum. The Museum of Communication in Bern always focused on the various aspects of communication. Why can we not escape the need to communicate in our life? And what does communication do to us? The visitors of the Museum of Communication become experts who bring their own daily knowledge and experience in communication and apply it in the museum. The unexpected interactives, fun games and actors hired by the museum ensure that a visit to the Museum of Communication is a vivid experience.

Due to the extremely fast developments of the digital era, the permanent exhibition had to be renewed. Kossmann.dejong created a design for the 2000 square metre exhibition area where the visitors can experience, test and explore the subject of "Communication" in innovative ways. Visitors explore the colourful world of communication with large-scale video projections, interactive games, and a large range of interesting facts.

We as main contractors are responsible for the development, engineering and implementation of the new permanent exhibition. Visitors will notice the almost Swiss precision for detail in all elements. At the same time, there is a large variety of large scenographic set-ups. There is for example the theme room "Datacenter" where a steel grid with blue light and flashing LEDs is the scene for digital communication tools. The museum also features a large "kommunikationswand" with striking eye catchers such as a red heart with arrows or rotating masks with a happy and sad faces, which are part of the décor. Bruns provided all the furniture, interactives, graphic work and audiovisual hardware (including show control). IJsfontein took on multimedia and the audiovisual content is handled by several Swiss companies. We have already hosted two "shop approvals" at our workplace. Approximately half of the museum was set up in full and has been viewed. The client and designers are both very pleased. We will be rounding up production in the coming months and we will go to Bern to complete the installation. We will finish before the summer and the renewed Museum of Communication will open again to the public as early as the 19th of August 2017.