Laura Hourston Hanks – författare

Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums.Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.

Over recent decades, many museums, galleries and historic sites around the world have enjoyed an unprecedented level of large-scale investment in their capital infrastructure, in building refurbishments and new gallery displays. This period has also seen the creation of countless new purpose-built museums and galleries, suggesting a fundamental re-evaluation of the processes of designing and shaping of museums.Museum Making: Narratives, Architectures, Exhibitions examines this re-making by exploring the inherently spatial character of narrative in the museum and its potential to connect on the deepest levels with human perception and imagination. Through this uniting theme, the chapters explore the power of narratives as structured experiences unfolding in space and time as well as the use of theatre, film and other technologies of storytelling by contemporary museum makers to generate meaningful and, it is argued here, highly effective and affective museum spaces. Contributions by an internationally diverse group of museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers, architects and artists with academics from a range of disciplines including museum studies, theatre studies, architecture, design and history cut across traditional boundaries including the historical and the contemporary and together explore the various roles and functions of narrative as a mechanism for the creation of engaging and meaningful interpretive environments.

New Museum Design provides a critical and compelling selective survey of contemporary international museum design since 2010. It provides an accessible and analytic review of the architectural landscape of museum and gallery design in the 2010s.The book comprises twelve case study museum and gallery projects from across Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. Each built example is interrogated through an essay and a series of beautiful supporting illustrations and drawings. Where appropriate architectural analysis is cross-scale, extending from consideration of the artefact’s encounter with museum space at the most intimate scale, through detailed architectural readings, to the wider perspective of urban/landscape response. Similarly, the book is not confined in its thematic or architectural ‘typological’ scope, including museums and art galleries, as well as remodellings, extensions and new build examples.New Museum Design provides a critical snapshot of contemporary international museum architecture, in order to: better understand reasons for the state of current practice; reveal and explore on-going themes and approaches in the field; and to point towards seminal future design directions. This book is essential reading for any student or professional interested in museum design.