Warships Exhibition ANMM

by studioplusthree

Sydney-based design practice studioplusthree has created an ‘infinitely flexible’ modular display system as part of the exhibition design for the Action Stations experience at the Australian National Maritime Museum

The exhibition is located inside a new pavilion, designed by FJMT, built to commemorate 100 years of the Royal Australian Navy. studioplusthree were commissioned to design the new permanent exhibition, which is centred around a set of bespoke steel tables – home to a modular system developed to accommodate a constantly evolving set of physical and digital pieces. With an emphasis on the tactile and the physical, the exhibition seeks to invite the visitor behind the scenes of navy life.

The project resulted from a brief that called for a “bold, unique, and confronting” design, and features a pair of double-curved, modular, steel tables that house the exhibition content. A skin of gently curving hot-rolled steel, specifically chosen and finished to maintain its raw aesthetic, conceals the central equipment zone for the digital content, with interior lighting that hints at the complex workings within.

Sitting between architecture, installation, industrial and furniture design, the tables feature a custom content display system designed to allow total flexibility in the curation and arrangement of exhibition content. Comprised of more than 2,600 individual components, this system allows for creating of a ‘landscape’ of content, with heights, sizes and types of content being able to change for future re-curation of the exhibition.

Developed through collaborations with disciplines ranging from boat building to repetition engineering to weaponology, the project was fabricated using state-of-the-art techniques, such as tube laser cutting, in combination with traditional skills such as sheet metal rolling.

“The exhibition sought to reflect the industrial heritage of steel shipbuilding with a contemporary spirit of simplicity and elegance,” said the designers. “Sitting between a submarine and a destroyer, it was important that it could hold its own without being overpowered by its surroundings”. Seating for the public was also designed by studioplusthree, to match the industrial aesthetic of the table. The exhibition also features a real-life torpedo suspended above visitors, partially exploded to reveal the mechanics inside.

In combination with an immersive cinematic experience by Spinifex Group, the Action Stations exhibition prepares visitors for the journey on-board the real-life vessels either side of the new pavilion. Through its combination of solidity and fluidity; of rawness and refinement; and complexity and simplicity, the Action Stations exhibition seeks to communicate the message of the naval dynamic.