Beautiful Me!

In the permanent exhibition at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden, which deals with various aspects of being human, gewerkdesign has redesigned the last room with a studio exhibition on the topic of beauty. »Beautiful Me!« is a participatory project involving around 100 Dresden residents, which will be expanded iteratively over the next few years. Exhibits and stories come from workshops and the permanent exhibition. Visitors find themselves in many places in this participatory and modular exhibition and actively contribute to its changeable design. In consideration of ecological sustainability, we worked with existing materials as much as possible.

As our first scenographic principle, we derived a rectangular floor grid from the existing furniture, which, when slightly tilted, can also be represented in trapezoids, triangles and parallelograms. This invisible angular structure is the basis of the construction and positioning of the display cases and sideboards. Contrasting with the linear grid, amorphous design is the second scenographic principle. The amorphous form is a direct reference to the individuality of human appearance and the diversity of beauty. Soft asymmetrical curves characterise the custom-made sofas in the centre of the room, which consist of modular parts and can be assembled in various ways. Here, visitors can relax in a comfortable sitting or lying position, take in the entire room and access audio and visual content at media stations. The room graphics also reflect the amorphous curves. The overall result is a lively scenography that is based on a systematic structure on the one hand and dynamises the room on the other.

The graphic design picks up on the principle of amorphous form. Wall and object texts are placed in partly rounded font on bubbles that look like flowing paint. On the open wall surfaces between the display cases, wall texts and wall objects, humorous illustrations lighten up the structure, provide information about the objects and content, and connect them with each other. We have incorporated the light pink that already defined the space in the old version into our colour palette and supplemented it with new, striking colours. An intense purple and a bold orange, together with the anthracite of the wall frames, display case borders and flooring, give the pink room a striking colour profile and at the same time reinforce the new lively freshness of the room's appearance. Media elements add a digital component to the space. For example, digital beauty filters can be tried out at an interactive media station using an augmented reality eye tracker. At another station, visitors can enter their own stories and suggest objects for the collection. Single-hand headphones and tablet-sized touchscreens are attached to the sofas, where interviews and personal stories on the subject of beauty can be accessed.