Museums • History • Nature
Kauri Museum: Forest Walkway, Interactives and Master Planning
Client
Location
Completed
The Kauri Museum
Matakohe, Aotearoa New Zealand
2023
The Project
Northland’s famous Kauri Museum engaged us to create a new entrance experience as part of the museum’s upgrade of their visitor circulation.
The brief for the Forest Walkway: to convey the sense of awe and wonder that Aotearoa New Zealand’s mightiest tree inspires, at the very start of the visitor journey.
The museum saw the project as the start of a process of incorporating a new dimension to the museum: the modern ‒ and te ao Māori ‒ perspective of kauri as extraordinary ancient living beings, as opposed to the traditional pioneer narrative of the trees principally as a resource to be exploited.
As part of that larger project, we also created a new interpretive Master plan for the future development of the museum, and concept designs for 16 new science and technology - and te ao Māori-centred interactives.
Our focus for the Forest Walkway was on creating a sense of wonder.
We wanted it to feel “mystical but modern”. We knew that there was no way that the budget would accommodate a highly realistic immersive recreation of a kauri forest, so instead we designed a number of sculptural lightboxes and an immersive soundscape to create the feel of an indoor forest.
The first space visually steps visitors back in time, showing how our relationship with kauri has changed over the centuries, and how kauri themselves have changed over hundreds of millions of years.
The second, very simply, tells the story of Rangi and Papa, the Sky Father and Earth Mother. In the telling of northern Māori it was their son Tāne, in the form of a kauri tree, pushed them apart to create the world of light.
The Process
Visitors then navigate through Tāne’s forest on an elevated wooden walkway, a nocturnal soundscape of night creatures gives way to the sound of birdsong as dawn breaks… and visitors move on into the main body of the museum.
The Kauri Museum Forest Walkway transforms the start of the visitor experience of the museum. In the future, the interpretive master planning and interactive concepts will also, we hope, help the museum broaden its appeal to a new generation of visitors.
The Result
Credits
Printing Production and Installation
Graphic Designer
Anderson Design Ltd
Fabrication and Installation
Big Colour
Lightbox Fabrication
Pizzaz
Illustrator
Andy Shaw
Jo Duff