Reich+Petch

Upper Canada Village Discovery Centre & Crysler Heritage Park Exhibits

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:04:59 +0000

The integrated architecture and exhibits for this new visitor centre presents life in Eastern Ontario in the 19th and 20th centuries, taking visitors into the lives of early Canadians. Interactive exhibits and themed zones explore the role of the St. Lawrence River in the War of 1812, the Battle of Crysler’s Farm and how people lived and settled along the river. This project was done in association with NORR Architects.

Royal Alberta Museum Master Plan

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:34:46 +0000

The Royal Alberta Museum has undergone a number of design endeavors to expand its facilities. Reich+Petch, fully engaged with these recent evolutionary phases, has provided several master plan documents and exhibit design strategies for the Museum’s expanded facilities. New and expanded galleries, whose scope ranges from Alberta’s land and history to biology and dedicated children’s pavilion, enable the Museum to offer experiences that excite and educate visitors about the story of Alberta. The Museum, with its fundamental institutional role and responsibility to collect, preserve, research and present objects, has rich natural and human history collections to draw upon when communicating these stories.

Published: Upper Canada Discovery Centre featured in Canadian Architect and World Leisure!

admin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:30:14 +0000

Canadian Architect has just featured Upper Canada Discovery Centre on their website, and World Leisure has also given it a mention!

To commemorate the bicentennial War of 1812 and its 50^th anniversary, Reich+Petch Architects Inc. was selected by the St. Lawrence Parks Commission to design an addition to its 19^th century living history village located in Morrisburg, Ontario. The scope of our work included Master Planning, Architecture, and Interior, Exhibit, Graphic, and Wayfinding Design. This centre is one of six other forts projects in Ontario that are receiving a redesign by Reich+Petch in honour of the upcoming 200^th anniversary. The other forts include: Fort York Visitor Centre, Fort Henry and Kingston Discovery Centre (opening Spring 2012), Old Fort Erie and Laura Secord Homestead (opened July 2011), Fort George National Historic Site (opened July 2011), and Fort Malden National Historic Site (opened June 2011).

To view additonal images, visit the Upper Canada Village project page on our website.

Deepa Sarin

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:06:21 +0000

Published: Markham Museum’s Favourite Things

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:59:04 +0000

Design Edge Canada and RGD Word have published profiles of our recently-opened exhibit at the Markham Museum.

“Favourite Things” is the first exhibition held in the new 3,000 square foot Collections Building exhibition gallery. Markham’s community members, including donors, city councilors and student curators, have come together to share their favourite things from the collection, all featured in this exhibit. Twenty-five objects were selected from the museum’s collection which tell the story of Markham.

The typographic texture that Reich+Petch designed weaves through the exhibit and represent the individual objects and archivals document from their 75,000+ collection. The pattern of words is applied to graphic panels and labels as a decorative element, uniting the range of artifacts and exhibit elements through a unified visual language.

See more photos of the exhibit here, taken by Edmund Li, our Director of Graphic Design.

The exhibit opened its doors to visitors on 24th September 2011, and is scheduled to run six months. Find out more at the Markham Museum website.

“Unconventional Thinking: Innovation” opened this weekend!

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:10:39 +0000

Unconventional Thinking: Innovation in the Waterloo Region opened this weekend at the Waterloo Region Museum. The exhibit, designed by Reich+Petch, explores the history of innovation in and around Waterloo. It also wrestles with ideas about what makes products and concepts succeed or fail, and ultimately what defines them as innovative. The show openend November 12th 2011 and is scheduled to run for 6 months.

Age of Mammals Gallery Wins a 2011 Excellence in Exhibition Award!

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:59:38 +0000

The Age of Mammals Gallery at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County received an award, with special recognition for Clarity of Message. Working with the Museum, Reich+Petch Design International were the exhibit designers on this project. The judges stated that, in addition to overall design, the NHM had done an extraordinary job distilling incredibly complex content into six visitor friendly words: Continents Move, Climates Change, Mammals Evolve. They also noted the outstanding organization and presentation of information, especially the effectiveness of the four layers of labels.

The Excellence in Exhibition competition recognizes outstanding achievement in exhibition from all types of museums, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens and non-commercial institutions offering exhibitions to the public. Winners were announced at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Museums in Houston, TX in 2011, and will receive national recognition in the AAM publication Museum News. In addition, all entries will be displayed at the Marketplace of Ideas.

Reich+Petch Design International were the exhibit designers for the two level 7,775 square foot Age of Mammals Gallery. This Gallery relates evolution to climate change and shows how adaptation to different ecosystems affected mammalian evolution and extinction.

The two-level heritage space has windows on three sides and a glazed roof light above. A mezzanine surrounds the second level perimeter with overlooks to the main gallery. The challenge for this project was to create a contemporary gallery while respecting the historically significant character and details of the space. This has been achieved with a very open free-flow design utilizing glass as a display medium and allowing uninterrupted views of the spectacular fossil specimens. Interactive multi-media is used in the gallery to communicate the theme of the influence of climate change on 65 million years of mammal evolution.

This project is the first to be developed in the Museums renewal project involving the seismic upgrading and restoration of the 1913 original wing of the Beaux Arts building.

Fort Henry & Kingston Discovery Centre

admin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:08:43 +0000

Design of the Discovery Centre is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to revitalize a treasured national heritage site and this part of Ontario’s only UNESCO world heritage site. The exhibits in the Discovery Centre are intended to complement the experiences that visitors enjoy within the Fort. Addressing the interactive needs and expectations of today’s visitors, design concepts and techniques are innovative, hands-on and involving, “state of the art” exhibit engagement activities to satisfy increasingly media savvy and sophisticates visitors.

Fernbank Museum of Natural History: Signature Gallery

admin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:05:19 +0000

The Signature Gallery, which showcases the natural diversity of the Georgian environment, asks the question, “What is success in the natural world?” A distinct departure from Fernbank’s previous diorama-based exhibits, this gallery has a strong contemporary feel and a non-linear exhibit plan. The conclusion of the show is a positive message about the importance of stewardship of the environment.

Beardmore Community Centre

admin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 20:02:40 +0000

This facility is the culmination of an effort by the community of Beardmore, Ontario to amalgamate their medical clinic, library, and visitor centre from three aging buildings into a new centralized facility, constructed on a high-profile site. The building provides a strong link between these three occupants. The building identity as a visitor centre is expressed with a higher mono-pitch roof with a tall foyer space and large glazed facade. The library and health centre are simple wings of the building with a modest scale and form.