MA Creative Practice for Narrative Environments pioneers collaborative practice among architects, designers, curators, writers and design managers.
Students work in multidisciplinary teams to create visitor experiences for cultural venues, visitor centres, exhibitions, museums, historic sites, entertainment venues, educational environments, sports events, shopping experiences, branded environments, corporate events, product launches, urban and community environments.
MACPfNE
2009–2011
Website: Project Website
The 2011 exhibition reveals how the twenty-nine graduating masters students show direct engagement with socio-economic, political and cultural issues. Students have developed and tested their projects through live workshops, exhibitions, interactive installations and events. The chaos and the complexity of the ‘real world’ is their lab and their testbed.
The 2011 projects are situated across a broad range of cultural, commercial and community environments – in city streets, public spaces, shops, cafes, libraries, church crypts, synagogues, community centres, markets, galleries, museums, forests and countrysides. There is a broad mix of practical proposals, speculative initiatives and poetic reflections. Students have designed complementary physical and virtual spaces. They demonstrate that narrative environments, or places that tell stories, can be found inside buildings, in public space, online or a combination of all of these.
The student work is shown in the subterranean car park at Holborn, with the dark space used to dramatic effect. The students’ project environments are projected on floor-to-ceiling screens that wrap around the central exhibit.
A 14 metre exhibition case in the centre of the space shows the individual proposals. The structure is a playful commentary on traditional museum display cases.