Image Credit : Photography by Brett Boardman and Jan Ashdown
Project Overview
Designed for the Australian Museum, Entro’s visitor journey program bridges the Museum’s heritage architecture with its contemporary addition. Featuring plantation-sourced Blackbutt timber to evoke First Nations influences; repurposed balustrades from the heritage reclamation to create bespoke signage, and best-in-class accessibility features, the whole ensures a memorable, emotional experience for all.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Jan Ashdown, Principal
Edmund Li, Creative Director
Amanda Morrison, Designer
Vanessa Tarasio, Designer
Project Brief
Our brief for the wayfinding and signage program for the renewed Australian Museum was to create a world-class visitor journey – a memorable and emotional experience that: connects visitors to this place and all that it stands for; integrates First Nations principles; and bridges the Museum’s heritage architecture with the new contemporary addition. The priority was to create a wayfinding experience that is “Welcoming, Clear, Respectful, Unique, and Accessible to All.” All concepts were referenced back to this statement to ensure that we were in alignment with our shared vision.
Project Innovation/Need
Prioritizing a highly collaborative process with stakeholders, Entro designed a wayfinding strategy that embodies the museum, incorporating native Australian materials that complement the Museum’s heritage architectural features. Plantation-sourced Blackbutt timber was used in positive and negative forms, evoking the natural world and First Nations influences respectfully.
The Museum’s vision for a fully accessible visitor experience that accommodates first-time users inspired us to develop unexpected new sign types, bespoke pictograms, and a user-friendly wayfinding program. Instead of relying on technology to translate written messages to braille, we worked with an unsighted person who edited our braille directional messages to ensure they were relevant to users.
Heritage Reclamation was another unique aspect of this project. In collaboration with the architects, we repurposed solid bronze balustrades salvaged from the demolition of the original grand stairs of the Museum’s 1960s Parkes Farmer Building and turned them into sculptural stair numbers for the new main stairs. The limited length of the solid brass resulted in a unique typographic treatment for the numerals.
Design Challenge
One of our challenges was to ensure the design was meaningful and authentic. We achieved this by truly listening to the stakeholders, to create a design solution that was based on the Museum’s needs, not on current trends. Insights from the Museum team, especially the First Nations staff members, led to an understanding of the sensitivity to the land on which the Museum sits. In particular, scarred trees, which provide wood or bark for the creation of cultural objects, were an influence as they have played a part in sharing knowledge and living in balance for millennia on the lands now known as Australia. All wayfinding signage is created with a duality of positive and negative shapes, representing what humans take from nature and what is left behind. This duality is carried through the entire sign program.
Our team also drew inspiration from natural landscapes, such as mountains, trees, and rivers. To represent nature, variations of size, shape and form were consciously incorporated into the design. Many of the signs stand vertically, mounted to columns or walls, and feature dimensional forms that fully integrate with both the existing heritage building and modern architectural language found in the renovated areas.
Customization was central to the realization of this program: all of the signs are bespoke to accommodate each function and location; special attention was taken to the way the timber was cut and edge treatments were softened, contributing to a cherished and living sense of place.
Sustainability
Australian Museum Director and CEO Kim McKay AO said Entro has made a lasting contribution to the Australian Museum. “The Australian Museum’s elegant new wayfinding not only helps visitors navigate the Museum’s old and new spaces, but it also incorporates native Australian materials that complement the Museum’s heritage architectural features. Aside from seeing the gorgeous end result, my favorite part of working with Entro was mapping out the visitor journey and determining the best signage program to create a seamless experience for all visitors when enjoying the transformed Australian Museum.”
Wayfinding
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in the ways people orient themselves in physical space, and navigate from place to place. Consideration given to signage and other graphic communication, clues in the building's spatial grammar, logical space planning, audible communication, tactile elements and provision for special-needs users.
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