National museum for tribal freedom fighters, Rajpipla, Gujrat

Abstract

While imaging and designing a museum, there remains a question in mind of many architects, curators and designers between the concepts that museums should follow its traditional practices or museums need to change, use of multimedia and other modern techniques and trying to engage with the culture. In my opinion, the case of practices of exhibits of curators in the museums is that, they are fascinated with one thing, i.e., eyeballs, and as we all know, their favourite slogan is “Do Not Touch.” So, when someone visits to a museum, that individual is only allowed to look at it and it not able to touch or feel it, this practice of displaying items where the individual is not able to experience the real ethos of that space, or of that exhibits, this make people exhausted or bored sometimes. Thus, the aim of the report is to understand how experientially approached designed architecture can play an important role in designing the museum. Where the objectives were to understand the role of experiential approached ideas in designing the exhibition spaces of a museum. To develop the design process through research towards utilizing the architecture of museum and developing the spaces. Then analysing that, what will be the emotion which will develop within an individual when the user will experience that space, and finally incorporating these inferences into the design. In this report, the research is carried out initially by understanding how exhibits and spaces could connect to the people, so that they could experience the ethos of the space, through various national and international case studies and literature studies such as, Jewish Museum, Berlin, designed by Ar. Daniel Libeskind, where he aimed to bring a Jewish presence back into the city after World War II, through his architecture. The research also includes understanding of different methods that are responsible for activating of emotions and how it can influence the experience of an individual like sensory architecture, stimuli, etc. The report seeks to answer the questions, as a new direction for designing a museum spaces is approached where the modern methods are applied which is based on Interactive Design (for e.g., Trillium Creek Primary School in West Linn is based on the concept of biophilic design ideas), Artificial Intelligence (like holographic projects, CGI’s, etc.) and Storytelling or narrative. Here, being the main focus on cultural heritage, a new technique for Museum Experience Design, where on one hand traditional visual and multimedia communication is facilitated, while, on the other hand, a new form of interaction with the exhibits or artefacts are used, where it focus on influencing the emotion of people, through different methods like sensory architecture(smell, taste, sight, hear and touch), stimuli, play of lights and shadows within the building, etc. for a better storytelling experience. The goal is not only to convey stories which are hidden inside the artefacts, but also, to connect to every items or objects, and also to find ways to create new ones through an interactive experience. Proposed is a National Museum for tribal freedom fighters, in Rajpipla, Gujarat, which aims to design an iconic museum for tribal freedom struggle in India that will reflect the spirit of tribal and also their culture and lifestyle.