Includes bibliographical references.

The poetry of place / Frank den Oudsten -- On the weight of the story -- On the emptiness of space -- On the radius of the metaphor -- The practice of design / Herman Kossmann -- The walk -- Synchronicity and layering -- Tension curves and the first encounter -- Immersion -- Interaction -- Between knowing and experiencing -- Identification and proximity -- Abstraction and metaphor -- Direction -- From cathedral to Disneyland : archtypes of narrative space / Suzanne Mulder -- The architectonic space -- The museum space -- The activist space -- The illusionist space.

This book is about exhibition design. It places the profession in a broad theoretical and cultural-historical context and defines a conceptual framework that brings out the dynamics of the field. Exhibitions are narrative environments in which the designer has to translate often complex and scientific objectives into an engaging spatial narrative that can comprise a mix of wide-ranging media and communicational strategies. With space, items from the collection, images, text, light, photography, film, new media and interaction, an exhibition is unsurpassed as a medium for informing and enticing visitors or users, one that can astonish, encourage engagement or evoke past experiences. And yet designing an exhibition as a coherent unity of content and form is still unexplored territory and rarely the subject of critical reflection. The book identifies the theatrical and scenographic principles of exhibitions as narrative space and holds out conceptual tools that can inspire a new approach to exhibition design.