TECHNICIAN’S GALLERY
The Technicians: The David Sainsbury Gallery is a new permanent exhibition at The Science Museum, London celebrating the vital role that Technicians play in our everyday lives. Through hands on and digital interactivity, the audience will have an insight into specific Technicians roles and try problem-solving tasks on gallery. The design highlights the four different sectors of: Advanced Manufacturing, Creative Industries, Health Science, and Energy Network where Techncians play an integral part.

The exhibition design creates a framework that can hold the stories of Technicians, while allowing their world to be explored through scenography, media and 1:1 encounters. Aesthetically, the framework is lightweight and conceived as a large-scale furniture piece which inhabits the gallery space. It is both robust and able to host a variety of materials and stories. Each world of Technicians is expressed through interactive stations, materials and signature colours relating to the workplaces exhibited.

Client: Science Museum Group 
Type: Exhibition
Year:
Supported by: The Gatsby Charitable Foundation
Exhibition Design: JAC Studios
Graphic Design: Lai Couto
Graphic Production: Leach Colour
Illustration: Shangomola Edunjobi
Media Design: YIPP, NEEEU, CLAY
AV: Electrosonic / Reeds
Exhibition fit out: Factory Settings
Photography: Andrew Meredith

The concept of the framework takes inspiration from the component parts of a model building kit. These kits are both playful and technical; qualities inherent to the work of Technicians, and to the atmosphere evoked in the exhibition. As a Technician, all actions are part of a larger whole - from the smallest scale of nanotechnology to the larger scale of energy production, together they make the world function. In the same way, within both the kit of parts and the gallery framework, many smaller elements come together to form a larger and greater whole.

At each gallery entrance, visitors are met with a scaled-up version of a model kit of parts with enlarged objects made in cnc’d ash housed in a five-metre-high metal frame that relate to specific Technician roles; for example, a stethoscope representative of a Veterinary Technician and prosthetic leg related to a Orthotic Technician. Alongside these objects are films that reflect Technical roles and bring these giant elements to life.

Graphically, there is a reference to graphic anime/manga style illustration by renowned artist Shango Edunjobi and graphic designer Lai Couto who create a link between the physical exhibition space and drawn world where the two become intertwined with animation, real world display and photography. Direct studies and life drawing exercises of real Technician environments for the large-scale drawings allow the illustrations to be accurate depictions of genuine situations that bring the exhibition space to life.