Excellence in (digital) exhibition design

The Biomuseo is a must-visit highlight in the Central American metropolis of Panama City. Located at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal and housed in a spectacular building designed by world-class architect Frank Gehry. The museum opened with all eight exhibition galleries in May 2019. invidis visited the museum and immersed into a fascinating museum concept.

The world-famous Panama Canal, panama hats and the historic old town – this is what visitors of Panama could marvel at for many decades. Since May 2019, a visit to the Biomuseo needs to be added to the bucket list – not only for digital signage aficionados.

In eight galleries, designed conceived by the design agency Without Boundaries, the museum presents the development of Panama’s biodiversity over the past three million years. The museum was opened in 2014; however, all exhibition areas were not completed until five years later. The international design agency Tellart developed the latest three new galleries, which are much more complex than the first five.

Thanks to the intelligent integration of state-of-the-art digital technology into the exhibition design and the building architecture, the impressive visitor journey is highly engaging and close to perfect. Visitors wander through air-conditioned galleries, 360-degree projections and interactive screens as well as open-air sections. The mix of digital enhanced air-conditioned indoor galleries and outdoor galleries in the scorching heat of the jungle to explore hundreds of butterfly species, makes a visit to the Biomuseo unique. Digital meets nature – just as one would ideally expect from an exhibition about nature.

Three exhibits we found particularly
impressive:

The Panamarama gallery starts with an immersive spatial projection. The film takes visitors on a journey through the rainforest and both oceans of Panama. It is a fascinating, high-resolution film, which was produced with detail and impressive resolution. We especially liked the projection because it is not limited to a dark room. The screens are distributed around the room like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle; they thus pick up the architecture of the museum. The visitors stand on a glass floor, which doubles as an additional canvas with projectors from below. One can literally feel and smell the rain forest.

The galleries “Building the Bridge” and “Oceans Divided” integrate digital signage touchpoints in a perfect way: Interacting with numerous touch-displays and interactive exhibits, visitors can learn for example how gravity works and the effects of earthquakes. Ocean Divided features two big aquariums that show visitors the differences in the fauna and flora of the Pacific and Caribbean ecosystems. In the very dark exhibition rooms, however, the digital touchpoints only play a secondary role. They complement the large aquariums with appropriate information in Spanish and English. The focus is on nature and its creatures, not on digital.

Storytelling does not get
much better than this

Our personal highlight is the last gallery „Panama is the Museum“. An elaborate floor projection with more than a dozen NEC projectors transform the space dynamically – matching the movements of the visitors as well as the choice of topics on digital kiosk systems. A central concrete sculpture in the room is both digital canvas and interaction surface simultaneously. Once again, the exhibition concept merges individual, personalized content to a common story that grows harmoniously and visibly into an overall digital canvas. Storytelling at it’s best – nature, architecture and digital create a seamless visitor experience.

US-based Visionary Solutions implemented the project. One of the technical requirements of the Biomuseo was that all digital signage touchpoints needed to be controlled centrally from a server room in the basement. By co-locating all media players and central components in one place, the museum and integrator can service all components without interrupting the exhibition experience. Due to the centralized installation individual touchpoints needed to be connected with dedicated high-performance AVoverIP solution to manage the UHD content.