United Nations
Exhibition Design
Through the convening power of the United Nations, visitors explore an exhibition related to the effects of internal displacement.
United Nations: Decade of Action
Client & Background
Highlighting the organization’s 75 years of global collaboration, the United Nations was seeking assistance in designing its upcoming exhibition presence for the 2020 Expo in Dubai. Under the Expo theme ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future,’ our team was tasked to develop an experimental exhibition celebrating the United Nations ‘Decade to Action’ campaign, a series of 17 sustainable goals to end poverty, rescue the planet, and build a peaceful world.
Working alongside a team of communications, interior, and environmental designers, as well as museum study graduates, we developed an exhibition proposal, Displaced: Searching for Home.
Diplomacy & Determination
The Approach
“With record numbers of people uprooted within their homelands due to conflict, disasters, the climate emergency, and other tragedies, more must be done to end this crisis.” - Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General
The plight of internally displaced persons is more than a humanitarian issue: it takes an integrated approach—combining our efforts in development, peacebuilding, human rights, climate action, and disaster relief—to find proper solutions.
Our exhibition follows the recent inclusion of refugees in the indicator framework for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through the convening power of the United Nations and the intersectionality of its work, our concept explores how action in one area—in this case forced displacement—will affect outcomes in others. Through diplomacy and determination, the SDGs will lead a decade of action.
Displaced: Searching For Home
Design Strategy
The exhibition is divided into three zones. Each zone follows a path towards displacement. Visitors first enter a communal space and interact with audio recordings of anecdotes, a collection of personal objects, and thoughts that surround our ideas of “home.” Rapidly, the exhibition staff starts ushering visitors towards zone two. By changing the tone, texture, and pace of the space, visitors start to feel uncertain of what lies ahead.
When visitors enter zone two, they are immersed in the impacts of famine, natural disasters, war, climate change, poverty, and human rights violations that create forms of displacement. As we introduce visitors to each impact, we analyze the causes and consequences these circumstances have on changing landscapes, population structures, and geopolitical economic realities—as well as the United Nations’ solutions towards eradicating these challenges.
Ultimately, we come to understand how imperative the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are to the next decade and decades beyond. The exhibition concludes in the reflection room, asking visitors to consider the importance of sustainable development. Our hope is to stimulate action, strengthen universal peace, and save homelands.
