The push for Artificial Intelligence integration across the professional world is inevitable, and as designers, AI isn't something to run from, but rather to embrace. This project begins with an AI-driven design matrix, using Midjourney's generative AI to create precedent imagery that would later contribute to the project design.
With the program being a D-Day Museum, we turned to the first-hand accounts of the soldiers that were on the beaches that day to inspire the matrix. Quotes from the soldiers that described the events of D-Day were fed to Midjourney to generate every image seen below, and those same quotes helped establish a timeline, which would eventually determine the different parts of the museum experience. These images were crucial in the design process, and one can draw connections between these precedent images and the final exhibition space renders.
We cannot recreate memories, but we can recreate moments in time and allow a new generation to make memories of their own. The number of living of World War II veterans is only getting smaller, and the collective memory of their sacrifice is at risk of being lost in time. What can we do to make memories last and to tell stories of the past to the generations of the future?
The International D-Day Museum takes two stances: one for this thesis and one against the White Cube Museum theory of the 1930s. This project's take on what makes a White Cube Museum comes down to context - or lack thereof. When comparing a museum experience of someone with no prior knowledge of the subject matter with an expert on the subject matter, the museum provides two vastly different outcomes. What can we do to bridge this gap and provide a more universal museum experience?
Providing a universally accepted context for something like D-Day is no easy task. In order to do so, we turned to the stories of the veterans themselves. The first-person accounts that were a driving force in the design matrix developed a timeline of the day broken into six main chronological events:
00:00 - The deployment of the airborne divisions
03:00 - The loading of the boats to cross the English Channel
06:00 - The first beach landing
09:30 - The flooding of the beaches due to high tides
10:00 - The climbing of the cliffs near the beaches
14:00 - The consolidation of the beaches and the end of the invasion
When it comes to the museum design, each of these events is represented by an exhibition space, with the design of each space inspired by the aforementioned first-person accounts of the corresponding event. This provides the necessary context for these stories to be retold and for the memories of these veterans to last. Now, how can this context be displayed in a museum setting?
The common criticism of White Cube Museums is that the curation of the art is the only focus of the architectural design. In the case of this museum, the logic is pretty similar, but the art has now become the architecture. The various forms that a visitor makes their way through are the art on display; each form has a story to tell and the collection of them creates the museum experience. Someone with a personal connection to D-Day and someone with no knowledge of D-Day can now experience the history displayed by this museum in a more similar manner.
These seemingly disconnected moments in time are rebuilt into one timeline - one collective memory.
The branches are connected by a central space that serves as a point of reflection. Not only does this space provide the visitor time to reflect on each exhibition space, but it also frames a view towards the coastal town of Arromanches Les Bains.
The town, or more so the people in it, were the first step in the liberation of France. Taking back the town was pivotal towards taking back Paris, and the visitors are reminded of that importance after each exhibition.
10:00 - Cliff Climbing Exhibition (Above)
Site Model - Looking towards Arromanches Les Bains (Below)
ARCH 4030 Studio | Instructor: Bosuk Hur | Collaborators: Nichole Gilbert and Kaitlyn Goth