Butterflies+Plants: Partners in Evolution
Overview
Butterflies+Plants: Partners in Evolution is inspired by the color and forms of these beautiful creatures, playing with scale and imagery to create a delightful experience of fun exploration.
Details
- Client
- Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
- Project
- Butterflies+Plants: Partners in Evolution
- Size
- 3,850 sq. ft.
- Scope
- Exhibit Design - Nature
- Location
- Washington DC, USA
- Year Completed
- 2008
The
Design
Butterflies+Plants features two major areas: a paid and timed live indoor butterfly pavilion and the free surrounding exhibit hall. The exhibit surrounds the visitor with colorful arrays of imagery and specimens to reinforce the connection between evolution and diversity. Dramatic icons, repeating motifs, animations, and surprising specimens are used to anchor the major themes.
The design team manipulated scale to set the cocoon-like pavilion within a vibrant spring-like setting of flowers and plants using the exhibit color palette and striking oversized images on the overhead graphic band. Colorful custom illustrations were commissioned to animate scientific details. Custom jewel-like circular cases were developed to highlight the specimens at an intimate scale. Dynamic, battery-powered butterfly models suggest an ‘escape from the pavilion’. Multimedia was used to support the main messages, explain the detailed and complex processes of plant and animal interaction, and engage visitors before they experienced the live species inside the butterfly pavilion.
The space planning and robust form and detail were designed to accommodate the Museum’s exceptionally high numbers of visitors – one of the highest in the world.
Case
Study/Behind the Scenes
R&P worked closely with museum scientists and writers to develop the narrative sequence and flow. With the architects of the pavilion shell structure, R&P helped to finesse the design language of the enclosure and integrated the displays with the environmental support systems necessary for the propagation and development of live tropical butterflies within the space.
