Forms in Context: Hybrid Exhibit Environments

Riya Bobde — Environments Mini Fall 2021

5 min readSep 7, 2021

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project brief: the goal of this project is to create an enhanced exhibit, one that emphasizes the importance of interaction aspects of the exhibit, both in physical and digital spaces, focusing in on and displaying either a specific artist or issue. The client of the exhibit is the museum or artist that carries the work that you are displaying.

I. Research

For my museum exhibit, I decided to visit the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History so I could choose one of the two to focus on for my project. After looking at all the exhibits I felt as though I had more to explore with the Natural History Museum. The issues that they presented were ones that I really resonated to, including climate change and Anthropocene.

Anthropocene is defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” While different scientists have various ideas on when exactly this era began, most agree that the effects that humans have had on the geological environment ramped up during the Industrial Revolution. I think that this would be very relevant talk about and include in my exhibit because Pittsburgh played a huge role in the Industrial Revolution. It is part of the area that is now known as the “Rust Belt”, but was once an area booming with industries, including logging, coal mining, and steel mining.

These industries had a great impact on Pittsburgh’s environment was well as climate change. Many factors in the city have greatly suffered, including food quality, water toxicity, air pollution, and deforestation.

Carnegie Natural History Museum: How Pittsburgh’s climate and environment has changed

Carnegie Natural History Museum: History of mining of oil and coal

Carnegie Natural History Museum: “Hall of Botany”

Notes on Anthropocene and Climate Change

II. Floor plans & Elevations

Using the CAD tools in InDesign, I was able to create a floor plan that matched the exact dimensions of the Miller ICA space and elevations to get a sense of how much space there would be on each of the respective walls.