Spanish designer Jaime Hayon has once again put his skills to the test to complete an extension to the Information Centre he previously designed at the Groninger Museum. Completed in 2015, the extension to the Dutch museum’s educational offering includes a new Discovery Space and Studio which is seamlessly integrated in Hayon’s inimitable style; this new space which is a continuation of the project’s existing design language, delivers a space for visitors to play, be creative and explore all kinds of materials through hands-on learning. Bold blue glass-fronted cabinets and drawers filled with artworks may be opened and pulled out, allowing guests to touch and engage with artworks in a way that is ordinarily off-limits, while also being able to use the studio space to make their own art works.

For this new space, Hayon has drawn inspiration from the jungle —albeit a modernised and highly stylised one, with a graphic and minimalistic mask motif discreetly represented in details all around the space. A serpentine table with Hayon’s signature radius-edge style winds through the studio space, provides a playful work surface and assists visitors to engage with one another as they sit side-by-side on smiling-face stools while decorative custom lighting hangs overhead, emulating tree branches with the light bulbs sitting on them like birds. In keeping with the style and tone of palette implemented in Hayon’s 2010 renovation of the museum’s Information Centre, custom-designed marble floors continue throughout the new spaces; meanwhile the existing, delicious mint green and burnt orange walls are complemented with candy-like pink and blue, colours also known as the 2016 Pantone colours of the year: Rose Quartz and Serenity blue.

https://www.yatzer.com/discovery-space-groninger-jaime-hayon