Since 2012, EOS has had a presence at the Science Centre Singapore (SCS), with 'Earth: Our Untamed Planet' exhibition. Through this parternship, EOS and SCS have welcomed millions of Singapore students and visitors from around the world to the exhibition, providing research, stories, and experiences that shape the geological framework of Southeast Asia, and the many natural hazards facing the region.
But, after seven years, it’s time for a review. So over the past couple of years, we’ve been talking with our SCS colleagues about changing up the current exhibition to update the experience and story we’re telling. In November 2018, we pulled our third collaborator, the world-famous Exploratorium, into the mix and officially launched the redesign project with a plan to open the new exhibition by the middle of 2020.
This three-way collaboration is the key to our project, with each of us bringing a different element of expertise to the project. SCS, as the home of our current exhibition, holds the history and the understanding of audience and engagement. EOS holds the science, pulling from our regional research as the framework for the stories we want to share. The Exploratorium holds the design expertise and exhibit prowess to create interactive experiences, using our research and SCS’s history, to develop a new exhibition that explains the natural hazards of the region in an engaging and educational way.
Since our launch in November, the team has met in Singapore and San Francisco, holding week-long workshops to develop the new concept and design. There is a lot of good stuff in the current exhibition so we had to figure out what to keep, to toss, to add, to reimagine.
We’re now almost halfway through the process with a design brief and about 24 new or reimagined exhibits making up a completely different experience, within the same footprint at SCS. The hard work of phase one is done and now the hard work of phase two begins. It’s time to build exhibits!
Over the next six months, we’ll be building new exhibits and testing them against the science and the elements of a science centre – they’ve got to be strong to withstand the use of millions of people. We’ll also develop the messaging, weaving in EOS research to explain what’s going on and provide natural hazard examples from the region.
Come early 2020, the old exhibition will come out and the newly designed experience will start taking shape on the floor of SCS.
As we build and test exhibits, both at SCS and at the Exploratorium, we’ll be sure to keep you posted. You never quite know what’s going to happen when a great idea and prototype hits the museum floor; it could be a great success or a big flop. We’ll also post up sneak peeks as the new exhibition goes in at SCS. If you want to make sure to get an invite to the opening, please sign up to receive the EOS newsletter. We’ll be sending updates and opening announcements throughout the year.
