Our design for Oslo Nasjonalmuseet’s exhibition of architectural drawing since the 2008 global financial crisis pairs today’s imperative for sustainable exhibition design with a curatorial emphasis on the process of making.
 
Rather than simply present a drawing as an image of a building, ‘Hand and Machine’ presents the act of drawing as a way of understanding and articulating the world. It features drawings by 40 international architectural practices ranging from collective computer-generated designs to hand drawings that investigate ritual and memory.
 
For the exhibition design we commissioned photographer Max Creasy to photograph the exhibitors’ studios and workplaces and used the images large scale in a grid on the floor. On this we positioned the drawings themselves in radial formation making use of ex-display units, existing back-of-house museum furniture and other exhibition-making tools.
 
For the exhibition’s typographic identity, which occupied the gallery’s end walls, we similarly laid bare the conditions of a typeface’s making. We typeset the title showing the geometric bounding boxes and radii offered by typeface-design software.
 
The orchestrated informality of our design positions the visitor into a archaeological slice through a moment of making.