Germ City—Microbes and the Metropolis

Practice Area

Client

Museum of the City of New York

Industry

  1. The large, curvilinear table is the main organizing device for the exhibition, carrying most of its artifacts and surrounding life-size objects, such as this life-size Ebola suit.

  2. The introductory anteroom sets the tone for the exhibition with microbe illustrations, projections that invite the viewer into the space, and large display type that mimics the movement of germs.

  3. This physical model shows an axonometric view of the exhibition. The central white table stands in contrast to a blue, supergraphic floor with miasmic paint continuing the color up the walls.

  4. A single, meandering surface, the table seamlessly carries audio and video stations, plexiglass cases, reproductions, object labels, interactive objects, and silica gaskets for microclimate control.

  5. Each table lobe contains objects that represent a city-wide response to disease, which corresponds to an adjacent wall section featuring interpretive text and wall-mounted objects.

  7. The Reading Room invites visitors to engage with interactive activities that reflect on and respond to the experience of the main gallery.

  8. Custom furniture and bookshelves invite visitors to enjoy games, maps, and artifacts that offer a dynamic, interactive lens on the content.

Project Vision

Germ City is the first segment of a multi-city initiative to “highlight the social and scientific interplay between people and pathogens” in the urban environment. The exhibition features over 100 scientific and historical artifacts, interactive stations, and commissioned artworks that tell the story of city-wide responses to infectious disease over the last 200 years.

While most exhibitions about the city highlight its verticality, this exhibit focuses instead on the organic flow of microbes. The main gallery creates a deeply-immersive, miasmic laboratory environment. A gigantic, curvilinear table in the center imagines a new exhibition typology of agglomeration that creates loose groupings to demonstrate connections among objects, reproductions and artworks that are thematically related. In the Reading Room, the discussion table typology is disaggregated into smaller, unique stations to invite diverse interpretations and hands-on engagement.

Throughout the exhibition, typography expands and contracts—much like the organic movement of microbes. Dozens of small microbe illustrations introduce the visitor to the “cast of characters” to help them keep track of the diseases discussed. Larger objects, such as a “Blood Mirror” sculpture that protests the exclusion of gay men from donations or a full-size iron lung, are situated in the negative space of the table shape to allow appropriate wheelchair access.

Project Details
Design Team

Waqas Jawaid (architect); Andy Chen, Jihye Um, Renald Louissaint, Hannah Meng (graphic designers)

Project Area

4,400 sq ft

Project Budget

$200,000

Fabricators

South Side Design and Building (fabrication, installation), Full Point Graphics (vinyl visual print solutions, labels)