reimagining sanitation

This Discovery Center exhibit about worldwide efforts to improve sanitation is a good example of our commitment to designs that reflect the goals and messaging of an experience, and our ability to make challenging subject matter compelling.

Project:
A Better Way To Go: Toilets & the future of sanitation

Gallery Type:
2,500 sq.-ft. Temporary exhibitioN

Our Role:
Exhibit design (Overall; Interactives; Display systems; Original artwork; Art direction & Graphic Design

Project Partners:
Gates Foundation Discovery Center, Seattle, WA (project leadership/curatorial vision/content development); HGC Studio (Graphic Design); Brendan HogaN (digital interactive DESIGN); VaugHN bell (art biospheres); Blackmouth (exhibit Builders)

Photos:
Brady Harvey

outside looking in

The facade of the Discovery Center features factoids and peek-a-boo views that draw attention to the exhibit within.

Potty Training

Introductory experiences on a ramp leading to the sanitation exhibit gallery offer ways to get comfortable with the topic before being presented with more challenging content.

Potty Mouth—a playful set of graphic speech bubbles—features words for poop from around the globe.

Stool Samples

The biology section includes tactile wooden sculptures that represent the Bristol Scale (a medical diagnostic chart used to classify the form of human feces) and a digital interactive survey that invites visitors to use the scale to choose which type of poop is most like theirs.

To each his own

To mirror the exhibit’s curatorial theme of reimagining sanitation, Curious Beast used common bathroom and plumbing materials in unexpected ways.

Displays in the How We Go section include a world map made of penny tile that provides a backdrop for physical and digital displays that explore the ways people go around the globe.

UNderground or off the grid

The Where Does It Go section looks into public sanitation systems, including Sewered and Non-sewered. The section features a lighted electronic interactive that illustrates all that can go wrong with such systems.

Poop + Terrarium

A set of beautiful “Poopariums” contain plantings in soil made from treated human feces. The openness of the display draws attention to exhibits in the room beyond.

Getting Into It

Visitors are invited to step into a series of inhabitable terrariums called “Biospheres”. These pieces were developed in collaboration with the artist Vaughn Bell, who originated this type of experience.

A different Look

The main gallery of the sanitation exhibit lays out solutions to thorny sanitation problems. At the core of the space is a showcase of cutting edge toilets. The toilets are framed by a curved wall made from common PVC plumbing pipe.

Meaningful Interactivity

The Gulper Interactive offers a visceral way to experience the value of a simple, inexpensive solution to the problem of emptying pit vitrines.

Conversation starter

The Water bar provides a place for staff to engage in conversations with visitors.