TOOL - Systematizing exhibition design

Introduction
The exhibition industry struggles with significant material waste due to the frequent turnover of temporary exhibitions, often involving bespoke exhibition design being discarded post-exhibition. This proposal addresses the gap between art institutions’ sustainable ambitions and their wasteful production practices, aiming to shift the mindset towards exhibition design and open up for new aesthetic potentials and a more sustainable exhibition practice.

Project Statement
A spatial exhibition design system based on reversible components, that challenges the traditional art display aesthetic and material approach, serving as an active implementation tool in the green transition of art institutions.

Concept
Based on the principle of connecting sheet materials and facilitating a reversible operation in the processes of staging exhibitions. A concept of reusing and reconfiguring both components and sheet materials, and as a result offering a circular alternative to today’s traditional approach to materials in exhibition design and its related material waste.

The TOOL Collection consists of brackets and butterflies, in two sizes. Additionally, an Eyelet Butterfly for suspension, Hinged Butterfly for variating angles, and an Adjustable Base for leveling.  The sizes are 40x40x40mm (Bracket L) and 29x29x29mm (Bracket S) and they can attach to sheet materials with a thickness up to 20mm. 

The strategy of TOOL addresses the barriers to green transition within art institutions, such as time, economy, and aesthetics. TOOL promotes a sustainable, circular infrastructure for exhibition materials through a rental-based system. It encourages early considerations of recyclability, contemporary and dogmatic aesthetics, and external collaborations. By reusing materials across institutions and ensuring efficient storage, TOOL reduces waste and minimizes environmental impact while enabling an innovative exhibition design aesthetic.

Implementation in current exhibition productions
TOOL is functioning both as a design ‘tool’ in the exhibition design phase and as a construction ‘tool’ when installing and de-installing.

Business Case 
TOOL is developed as an external rental-based company, that with the reversible system can facilitate internal and external circularity of exhibition materials between art institutions, promoting sustainable practices across institutions and temporary exhibitions.

Storage
TOOL enables flat-packed storage and thereby efficient storage management of observed limited storage capacity to prevent deadstock, and materials being discarded post-exhibition. Additionally flat-packed shipping when exhibitions are traveling from one institution to another.