H2E, the leading design studio in Latvia, created the exhibition design for the distinguished Latvian writer‘s Rainis museum „Tadenava“. It was opened late summer this year after renovation. The underlying concept of the exhibition design is moving away from the digitisation of the century.

Why do designers make such a decision at a time when technologies offer the digitisation of everything and everyone? The museum is housed in a historic building built in the 19th century sixties and is 200 km from the capital city of Latvia, Riga.

Tadenava is a personality museum. In the historic building the great Latvian writer Rainis experienced his childhood environment. With the exhibition- game the designers invite visitors to do the same. To experience, see, hear, observe. The designers’ vision for the exhibition is to develop creativity. Full visitors’s involvement in the exploration of the exhibition, encouraging everyone to develop imagery with the help of interactive games, desire to interpret the content and interact. Analogue and easily comprehensible interactions are meaningful and educational both for children and their parents.

Every game has a reference to Rainis’s life or literary heritage. The exhibition is 100% tactile. Small wooden ball as an initiator and maintainer of the communication between the exhibition, visitor and young Rainis. For example, the ball is put in a cradle, the visitor swings the cradle, then forms a sound.

The ball initiates action. Visitor rolls the biography of Rainis in rotating labyrinth or wooden 3-D map; reads the word „sun“ in forest made of wooden balls that are hung in ropes; swings on a wooden horse; plays a strategic game named as Rainis’s play. United wayfinding system guides visitors throughout the museum’s territory.

The time-affected opposed to the new is organically integrated in the whole territory of the farmstead. The polished aluminium creates contrast with rusted black metal. The color scheme of the wayfinding system does not suppress the historical environment, but supplements it with minimalistic graphic language that characterizes the museum’s visual identity. The exhibition is created as an impulse for further each and every visitor’s relationship with Rainis’s work, Rainis or himself. Designers give chance for everyone to interpret and take home the sunlight of Tadenava, recovered joy of a child or Rainis’s thought.

Founded in 2007, Riga, the award-winning design studio H2E is now one of the most experienced and influential design studio in Latvia. H2E specializes in exhibition design, interior design and graphic design. 100% tactile exhibition- game that moves away from the digitisation of the century? It is the exhibition that we created for the Rainis’s museum „Tadenava“. The exhibition develops creativity and invites visitors to reveal the exhibition content via analogue interactive games. Small wooden ball – as an initiator and maintainer of the communication between the exhibition, visitor and young Rainis.

Design: Studio H2E