Klimahuset
Oslo, Norway
A new museum for climate change is being established in Norway under the umbrella of Oslo University Natural History Museum: The Climate House. A cross-disciplinary team made up of scientists, science communicators, architects, exhibition designers, and interactive exhibit designers were given this task. Our challenge was to create enthusiasm for the climate challenge amongst the youths of Norway. This museum should be the center for scientific proof of climate change, a space engendering debate on the best ways to combat climate change and be a catalyst for change.
The exhibition which is close to 300 sqm in size was designed by SixSides. CICERO, Center for International Climate Research, was responsible for the scientific part of the climate change expertise.
Gagarin designed an interactive projection experience in the exhibition: an installation serving as a central immersive space that dynamically shifts between being both a panoramic cinematic experience and a delicate ambient interaction.
This visitor’s cinematic experience consists of three panoramic films that in turn give examples of the consequences of climate change as it pertains to extreme weather, glacial melting, and extinction of species. The aim of this installation is to give powerful and poetic narratives where visitors get to experience the changes on various levels and scales. Be it the massive calving glaciers of Antarctica or the tiny insects that no longer pollinate our crops, from the painfully beautifully melting ice crystals to the massive hurricanes and their consequences.
In between the panoramic immersive films the room changes character into a more ambient projection that at the same time signals the same predicament of climate change but here focuses on the human role in it. When visitors step (too) close to the installation it gives them a disturbing reaction, in the way that the environmental systems do when interfered with by human action. Here visitors can get an insight into these effects on an experiential level and see how our anthropocentrism disturbed the flocking of birds, changes in ocean currents, and turned geology into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons.
Video: Natural History Museum in Oslo.
Photos: Marianne Gjørv
Screenshots from the floor projection.