Anatomy of the House, travelling exhibition

Graven designed this touring exhibition for The Lighthouse, Scotland’s international centre for architecture, design and the city, as part of the first year of a three year National Architecture Policy programme funded by the Scottish Executive.

Graven managed the design, build and Scottish tour of the exhibition, which deconstructed the history, evolution and function of Scottish homes. The exhibition used graphic design to examine six different types of home: croft, castle, settlement, urban, suburban and ‘adapt’ (homes that had been altered). Modern versions of ancient types of home were featured and we produced digital video footage in order to provide building tours, interviews with the architects who built them and the people who live in them, and other digital content.

The exhibition was the focus of many community based events. It toured a wide variety of venues ranging from village halls to larger galleries in towns and cities. In order to accommodate the extreme variation in space the exhibition was conceived as a series of eight ‘film flats’ on lockable wheels. These could be moved to expand the exhibition to fit both large and small spaces.

We also designed a 94-page catalogue, with fold-out transcripts of interviews with architects and residents. This accompanied the exhibition and provided a permanent record of the information generated by the project.