SITU Studio transformed our Great Hall in 2012 for their reOrder exhibition. Photo by Keith Sirchio

You may remember SITU Studio from their previous installation here, reOrder.

If you’ve ever visited us, you know that the Glass Pavilion and Lobby are beautiful architectural spaces with greater potential to make things more welcoming, better utilize the space, and provide modern options like seating with integrated outlets where you could take a load off and charge your phone at the same time. Together with SITU Studios, we we aim to fulfill that potential and introduce something new.

Our current lobby has its challenges.

The success of our ASK app hinges on people—namely the staff we hire to answer visitor questions and we see them as a key part of our entry experience. This audience engagement team will be stationed in a visible “hub,” so they can speak with visitors in person, explain the app, invite participation, help download it, and get them on their way. The hub also functions as the home base for this team; essentially, they’ll be working out in the open answering questions that come in via the app. We think the hub should be one of the first things you see when you walk into the Museum; someplace like the Pavilion or Lobby—we think. 

Working closely with SITU, we enumerated the challenges we were seeing, which they show clearly in this diagram of the space. Courtesy SITU Studio.

There is still a lot we’re unsure about, including at what point in the visitor experience people will be ready to download the app. We think, at the very least, visitors will need to be introduced to the idea as part of the entry experience, but we’re not sure how it will relate to the admissions process, for example. So, like the rest of Bloomberg Connects, we need to be able to test, evaluate, and iterate and to do that, we need a clean slate and a flexible design solution. 

Early, schematic design drawings of some of the components under consideration. Courtesy SITU Studio.

In the coming months you will see lots of changes when you come into the Museum. The existing admissions desk will be removed and replaced with mobile furniture that we can reconfigure in a myriad of ways to find out what organization makes the most sense. Some of the new elements we are envisioning include comfortable seating; clearer messaging so that visitors can better understand who we are, where to go, and what to do; new ticketing and membership desks; and the “hub” where our Bloomberg Connects staff will be stationed.

Modular components mean we can test placement, watch traffic, and change accordingly to better serve you when you come through the door.