Egpytian Mummies Powerhouse Museum

by studioplusthree

From The Architects

Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives brings six Egyptian mummies from the British Museum’s collection to the Powerhouse Museum, featuring interactive CT scans to reveal secrets of the mummies and their lives. The exhibition utilises techniques of colour, space, lighting and technology to bring this evocative ancient world to life.

This exhibition sought to create individual, human connections between visitors and six ancient Egyptians through the careful use of space, colour and light. Each of the mummies is presented alongside a human‐scale digital CT scan, allowing analysis whilst preserving their original condition.

The focus was on creating an experiential, immersive interior appropriate for the significant content ‐ playing on concepts of solid and void, colour and light. The human relationship to the mummies is reinforced through consciousness of physical scale, expressed through architectural exaggerations of width, depth and height.

Spatial relationships were designed to create intimacy between visitors and the mummies, as well as moments of drama and anticipation. On entering, a narrow double‐height space converges before opening into the first chamber. Lit dramatically from above, it seeks to create a symbolic transition from the present to the past.

The exhibition walls, through careful detailing, convey a feeling of solidity, mass and depth, whilst deliberate openings reveal connections through and across the spaces. Colour and light establishes a narrative journey and brings the ancient world to life, from pale tones for practical procedures and earthly concerns, to richer blues and turquoise relating to more ethereal themes of magic and gods.

With a tight budget and stringent conservation and security requirements due to the precious nature of the objects, the exhibition was developed as a bespoke system of hinged walls and hidden showcases ‐ creating back‐of‐house access, and allowing existing showcases and modular walls to be integrated in a manner aesthetically consistent with the overall design.

An existing column grid is concealed using the depth of exhibition walls, which also accommodate showcases and services. This results in an unobstructed layout; revealing objects in clean apertures along uninterrupted wall surfaces, and allows their accentuation through the controlled use of light and colour.

Spatial and sensory devices seek to emphasise the human scale, encouraging physical interaction as well as intellectual engagement. A crawl tunnel alludes to the actual archaeological experience of entering constricted spaces; a ‘peephole’ glimpses through to a large sarcophagus, evoking a feeling of first discovery; and visitors are invited to smell ingredients used in mummification through purpose built sample boxes.

Relationships between physical, perceptual and narrative elements are carefully balanced to produce a reverent, immersive and coherent experience, supported through the sensitive use of refined graphics and lighting.

The exhibition reminds visitors of their relationship to these ancient people, rather than presenting them as a display that is simply observed. The experience engages digital technologies whilst relying on age‐old physical techniques: contrast of scale, colour and light. Tall, narrow spaces; dark chambers and subtly lit objects; the glimmer of gold; all serve to bring these enduring human stories to life.