YAA Projects designs architecture in dialogue and response to place, identity, climate, material and history.
YAA Projects’ exhibition design for the Design Museum and Future Observatory’s Design Researchers on Residence display addresses the theme of Solar, showcasing the work of four design researchers. The exhibition reflects on humans and other species’ relationships to solar, as a source of energy and increasingly a challenge due to warming temperatures. It examines our nuanced relationship to the sun as both an energy resource and a condition to be negotiated within the built environment.
Staged in four sections, the design transforms the existing Residency Studio, typically a workspace, into a showcase for the design residents. A continuous plinth, made in diagonally stacked, hit and miss brickwork lines the edge of the space, providing display space for objects, books and research. The bricks used are made from near 100% recycled demolition and construction waste materials and have 95% less embodied carbon that a traditional clay brick. The stacked design language takes inspiration from the ubiquitous stacked assemblies of construction materials. Each researcher’s section is marked with a graphic totem, an indentation in the plinth, emphasising the design's exploration of solar, shade, and shadow. Complementing the bold plinth, natural linen fabric lines the walls, offering neutral space for drawings and framed works.
Reacting against a tendency to design temporary exhibitions as though are permanent architectures, YAA Projects’ exhibition celebrates temporality and impermanence, emphasising an approach to sustainability and regenerative design. The design's elemental language focuses on disassembly and reuse. By stacking instead of bonding the bricks, they can be easily disassembled and reused after the exhibition. The robust, freestanding black timber plinths are designed for reuse in future displays.
YAA Projects’ exhibition design aligns with the Design Museum’s commitment to sustainability and reducing the environmental impact of temporary displays. Ultimately, the design explores solar as an environmental and material condition while raising questions about the role of impermanence and reuse in sustainable regenerative design.
Photography: © Henry Mills for the Design Museum