The project’s aims were to redevelop the museum displays, increase visitor numbers and deliver a major attraction for the 2015 Rugby World Cup. Our preliminary proposal included a rigorous costing for design improvements to the museum’s exterior and interior exhibition areas in the run up to the 2015 Rugby World Cup coming to the UK.
Goal
With a lack of investment during the last ten years the museum was looking tired, out of date and unrepresentative of the international game that rugby is today. Looking ahead to the World Cup coming to the home of rugby in 2015, refurbishment would be required to bring the museum up to a standard fitting for a world class museum representing the international rugby community at Twickenham.
With a small initial budget, we were asked to provide proposals and costs to improve the visitor experience, as well as an option to completely refurbish and redevelop the museum.
Understanding budget constraints, we proposed a series of new features and updates to refresh the interior space that would allow the museum’s management to decide on financial allocation and priorities. The bulk of the budget was to be allocated to redesigning the ‘Wall of Fame’ and ‘Occasion and Passion’ sections to incorporate AV and onscreen interactive displays.
Interactive
To celebrate 100 of the world’s greatest rugby players, we recommended a glass screen as a feature wall with a large built-in interactive touch screen. The onscreen display showing a presentation of these great players allows several visitors to interact at the same time, manipulating moving images of players in action, voting for their choice of the greatest and proposing new inductees.
Flanking the large monitor mounted behind glass is a display of international jerseys to form a celebratory and colourful composition.
Portal to game’s history
We wanted the entrance lobby interior to make a statement that visitors had arrived at the premier rugby museum in the world. Among our ideas we recommended a new LED strip above the entrance doors, a refurbished reception desk area and a series of frameless video screens with moving images to create drama, bringing out the dynamism, speed and physicality of the game.
A low-cost alternative solution was for a series of small glass fronted vitrines set into the wall displaying emblems of different international teams with dramatic images of great rugby players of the world on the facing walls.
On the pitch
To augment the visitor experience, we proposed a 360˚ screening of Twickenham Stadium on the day of the final from inside the pitch. Visitors experience the thrill of entering the stadium through the players’ tunnel. They are then in the thick of the action with scenes of the crowds seated in the towering terraces projected onto the surrounding walls. Vertical towers of seamless monitors display full size rugby action.
Goal ticking performance
It was a challenging project given the high cost of display hardware and the development of interactive programmes. Nonetheless, the museum now has a series of creditable visitor displays with the option to add to these as budgets allow.