Title Greta Magnusson Grossman
Category Exhibition design
Client ArkDes, www.arkdes.se
Material Alucore boards, birch plywood
Year 2010
Greta Magnusson Grossman was a pioneering Swedish architect and designer, and one of the first women to achieve international recognition in the field. Working across furniture, lighting and interiors from the 1940s onwards, she built a significant practice in Los Angeles and became known for a modernist design language that was both rigorous and warm.
The exhibition design is built around two guiding ideas: grand perspectives and contrast. Grossman's work spans a wide range of materials, colours and expressions, and the design responds to this richness by working consistently with a single material and a single colour throughout, white lacquered aluminium sheet. The restraint of the setting allows the work to speak clearly.
The formal reference is paper, the primary medium of the architect. All metal surfaces are treated as though they were thin sheets, folded and scored rather than welded or bolted. Desk surfaces are proportioned on the A4 system and the supporting structures are assembled like paper card houses, precise and lightweight in their construction. The exhibition is designed to travel, flat packing easily for reinstallation in new venues.