A huge wheel turns and turns. It is a flat disc, with round holes of different sizes around the rim. Each hole exhibits an object which is iconic of Switzerland, such as a crossbow. These objects actually have little real connection with Swiss history, let alone representing its essence, yet they have become part of the country’s mythology. In their endless circular movement, the images keep reappearing in the mind’s eye. This ironic exhibition machine is one of the installations that architects Barbara Holzer and Tristan Kobler of the Swiss architectural office Holzer Kobler Architekturen designed for the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. Their other installations are equally innovative, and include a catwalk for historic costumes and a choir of Virgin Mary statuettes. In their office in Zurich, we asked the architects why they choose such a spectacular format for exhibiting objects and images portraying Swiss history.
“It is all about storytelling,” Barbara Holzer said. “You need the objects to tell the story. Most of the object are not very interesting in their own right. You have to bring them together and put them in a certain sequence, to present them in a way which will tell the story or convey the overall image. How to show historical objects and collections always takes some thought. Should the approach be full of fantasy, or should it be restrained? And for what time frame do you have to design the exhibition – five years, seven or ten? That is not an issue when you have a large collection of beautiful objects. Then you can work differently: you can put them in showcases and make occasional changes to the objects on display. And with a showpiece like the Mona Lisa, you don’t even need to make changes.”

Tristan Kobler: “It also matters how people will perceive the exhibition. That will change in the course of time. In twenty years, you are no longer the same person and your perception is different. People will take a different view of history in twenty years’ time. There is no way of designing for eternity, either in architecture or in exhibition design. We can’t assume the design will still be okay two decades from now, because perhaps it won’t be. It has to function in the present. Today, in my view, we have to design for the cyber generation. Exhibitions should reflect the fact that contemporary life is fast, offers many different options and is open to different perceptions.”

Did you pick a contemporary phenomenon like the catwalk as a display device in order to place the design explicitly in a modern context?
Holzer: “It was primarily a way of grouping things. The way you present a particular group of objects conveys a lot of meaning and can make a much clearer impact on the viewer. It’s particularly effective when the resulting image is something that people recognize from their own experience. That’s why we chose the catwalk. Most of the objects are not very interesting in themselves, so our main concern was how to group them. We aimed to create the right space and the right atmosphere for them. We are architects, so our approach is always a spatial one. Our concern is how to arrange objects in space.”
Kobler: “Visitors are important players in the game. They can view the objects from different angles, in some cases even from above through overhead mirrors. They also perceive one another. Much of the tension of the exhibition is created by the people themselves and by how they move through the space. They study the objects, and see other visitors as though they were part of the installation. Movement is an integral part of our installations. It’s usual to think of architecture a something static, but you have to move through it, so the perception of a space is in constant movement. We play with that idea, as a kind of game – with what people see, and how they move. Sometimes we guide or manipulate them in a certain direction, and sometimes we leave them free to go whatever way they like. The historians were worried that people would take the wrong direction and misunderstand the chronology as a result. We had to convince them to give the visitors some freedom of movement.’

But by manipulating people’s movements and arranging the objects in specific ways, aren’t you imposing a certain interpretation of history on the visitors?
Kobler: “You could say it just presents a point of view, one of many possible interpretations. The materials have an air of impermanence, as does the detailing. The exhibition is not intended to look like an everlasting construction that broadcasts a single, unchanging interpretation. It’s more like a sketch of how we think at this moment. It presents fragments of history. You clearly feel it is not the whole picture, and we could just as well have used different fragments.”

Your installations are not so much aimed as creating an interior, as at staging visual events and entertaining people. Why?
Kobler: “To put them in the right mood, I would say. You have to be aware of how people feel in there, and what they will perceive. It is not primarily a matter of appearances. The visual aspect is part of it, but we are also concerned whether visitors feel confused or at ease, or for example whether the sound is too loud or too soft. Aspects like that can affect how people feel in a space.”
Holzer: “The aim is to create places that are attractive. It would be going too far to describe what we do as staging visual events. That kind of thing sounds commercial, and although there is nothing bad about being commercial, it is not our prime interest. We try to picture ourselves as the first visitors, as people who don’t know anything about Swiss history; or, in the case of our project for the Military Museum in Dresden, about the military history of Germany. Then we try to invent solutions to tell the story in an appealing and meaningful way. It is more than describing a history. It has to be clear why you made the exhibition, and what you want to say with it at the present time and in the future. We want to show what relevance it could have to everyday life.”

In the Swiss National Museum, the installations tend towards immateriality. Forms are fragmented, and are sometimes even scattered in pieces. Why did you move away from using strong forms with their outspoken materiality?
Holzer: “Because we were trying to create a stronger dynamic. The museum was built in the nineteenth century in the style of a castle. We wanted to create some openness in that prescribed, dominating context – a different relation with space, not just a refurbishment.”

Your installations change the way we perceive the old building. It seems to lose its grounding, its solid foundation. Do you agree?
Kobler: “Yes, that is a very important part of the idea as well. You get a new feeling about the building, a new way of looking at it. We are always looking for an interesting dialogue with the context, a dialogue that brings in some dynamics as well. In this case the context is the old building. It may look like a castle, but it has a steel frame structure covered by brickwork. The same kind of thinking applies to our architectural work. In the case of our housing project in the Swiss town of Dietikon, the architectural context spans a period of about two hundred years. The buildings in the vicinity of the project range from historic farmhouses and nineteenth century workers’ houses to 1950s modernism. Each building represents its own era and reflects the economic conditions of the time.”

What did you learn from designing exhibitions that was applicable in your architecture?
Kobler: “Architecture is more than just architecture, despite what some architects would say. In an exhibition, you have to tell a story, to create an atmosphere that touches people’s emotions – that makes them laugh or cry, so to speak. Architecture can do that as well. The experience with exhibition design helped us think consistently about what it is possible to do with space, and how to affect people’s feelings.”
Holzer: ‘Exhibition design is largely a matter of transformation. The designer transforms an existing space. There is never a neutral space or a neutral context. The transformation is closely bound up with the content, and that is different for every exhibition. You have to invent something new each time. It is the same when you are designing a building. Who can say whether an office building will always stay an office building, or a house will always be a house? Exhibition designing helps you learn to deal with transformation as a fundamental aspect of architecture. It also reminds you that people never perceive architecture from a bird’s eye view, but from a human level – about 1.50 metres above ground level. It is totally different from the perspective designers usually take. The way a person moves through space is what really counts. It implies having a fragmented view of space; the perception becomes the sequence of fragments.”
Holzer and Kobler also noted some significant differences between architecture and exhibition design. What has to be told - the narrative - is more or less given in an exhibition. Architects have to create their own narrative when they are conceptualizing and designing a building. The brief is the starting point, but there is some freedom in the arrangement of spaces and in the sequence of functions. That is where scenography enters into the design of buildings. “Architecture does not ask for scenography, it asks for function,” Tristan Kobler explained. “But good architecture contributes an appealing story, all the same. The story depends on where the project is situated and what cultural relevance it has. The reverse is true for exhibition design. There the story – the narrative or history – is defined in advance. A visitor goes to an exhibition expecting a story and not a function. A person could choose to go to the cinema, to the park or to the exhibition. In each case the expectations differ, so the strategies of the architect should differ as well. The visitor to an exhibition is looking for a confrontation with something new – a confrontation with objects, ideas and other people. For the architect, the job is to create a situation in which that confrontation is possible.”

Should architecture be unobtrusive? Should it express itself solely through qualities such as proportion, order and symmetry?
Holzer: “The architect always has to deal with geometry and order. They are implicit in the act of building, and they can be part of what drives the project. But in the end a building must not be purely self-referent. It doesn’t work that way. It must also communicate. It can be conspicuous, or it can be unobtrusive and well integrated, but the architect has to be aware of what is the building is saying or quoting. It is like choosing how to dress yourself; when you decide what to wear you are conscious of what your clothes say to the world.’

Is there a particular message you aim to communicate?
Holzer: “What we communicate is about community. You always create space for a certain community. We like to arrange spaces in such a way that meeting other people becomes possible.”
Kobler: “It is also about creating identity. Our purpose is to give people the opportunity to identify with the community around them. A strong building design is one that gives people a place to live or work and which they can relate to and identify with. It’s an important issue in architecture today. Take the example of the banlieux around Paris, where sheer size of the blocks of flats make identification impossible for people. The anonymity of those huge buildings is responsible for a lot of social unrest.”

Is it the architect’s duty to provide that identity? Is the lack of identification really a result of the buildings where people live?
Holzer: “It is. Take Switzerland for instance, and some other European countries too. Over fifty percent of homes are occupied by one-person households, and the proportion is growing. In that situation the identity provided by the architecture becomes more and more relevant. It has to create possibilities for people to meet their neighbours. It can make them feel connected and responsible, and that is the basis of forming a community.”