Britain’s top travel journalists have voted Charles Darwin’s home, Down House at Downe, near Orpington, Kent as the best UK Tourism Project for 2009. Members of the British Guild of Travel Writers gave the house – Darwin’s home for 40 years – the accolade for the new exhibition and interpretation which opened at the visitor attraction in February to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth.

“They loved the beautiful way the ground floor is presented, the amazing new displays – especially Charles Darwin’s reconstructed cabin from HMS Beagle – and were very positive about the way we have embraced new technology with video guides, narrated by Sir David Attenborough and journalist and broadcaster Andrew Marr,” said English Heritage Visitor Operations Manager for Down House Richard Smith-Gore, who collected the award at a ceremony at a top London hotel on Sunday night.

The exhibition installed for the anniversary hit headlines when it opened in February and continues to be a real crowd-puller. Tracing his life and work, it features rare original personal objects and manuscripts as well as a full-size reconstruction of the cramped cabin which was his home for five years during his epic adventure on the Beagle. Visitors can tour the house which features his study, still overflowing with his books, scientific instruments and personal items.

The 18-acre estate surrounding the house looks much as it would have done when it served as the scientist’s ‘outdoor laboratory,’ where he tested his theories on evolution.  A detailed handheld video tour of the garden allows visitors to discover the gardens at their own pace and find out about some of the experiments Darwin carried out there.

English Heritage Site

The Home of Charles Darwin © English Heritage

Designmap have been appointed by the London Borough of Dagenham and Barking to create the brand identity for two new heritage visitor attractions, Valence House and Eastbury Manor. We will also be working with Brennan Design to deliver the exhibition graphics for Eastbury Manor.

Designmap have been appointed by Sheffield Millennium Galleries to design their new touring exhibition ‘Food Glorious Food’.

Following a successful stage 1 HLF application and support from Bedford Borough Council, Designmap have been appointed to design the new and refurbished galleries at Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum. Cecil Higgins Art Gallery will display an outstanding collection of water colours, prints and applied arts, whilst the Museum tells the Bedford story over four main galleries.

Development Plans for Westminster Abbey

A new exhibition outlining the development plan, 2020 Vision, for Westminster Abbey, which has set an exciting agenda over the next decade for the world-famous coronation church in the heart of London runs at the Abbey’s Chapter House until the end of September 2009.

Westminster Abbey Site

Independent Press

Designmap is developing the visitor experience at the Victorian-era Crossness Sewage Treatment Works Complex, London SE2, as part of a wider £3m restoration which is set to open to the public next year. The development will see new visitor facilities added to the complex, including a permanent exhibition, a retail space, a café and an education suite, as well as the restoration of the engines, pumps, auxiliary plant, decorative cast iron work, buildings and services.

The project is expected to turn the complex into a registered museum, with the possible titles of the Museum of sanitation Engineering or the Crossness Industrial Museum. The exhibition, which goes under the working title The Great stink, is a high priority for the regeneration of the Victorian complex, with its steam engine house and historic Grade 1-listed buildings, says Crossness Engines Trust director Mike Jones. ‘It will be what attracts visitors. There’s a really good story here, from what happens on site to how it relates to waste management today and ecological issues,’ says Jones. The exhibition will also illustrate the modern treatment technology used by the neighbouring Thames Water plant.

Although Crossness has been gathering funding to create a visitor experience since 2003, Designmap was only brought on board to the exhibition side of the project in the middle of last year, following a three-way official tender process. Designmap director Daniel Sutton explains that the brief includes considerations such as integrating the library into the exhibition space, and incorporating the sanitation and waste-disposal issues facing developing countries into the story.

‘The exhibition is to be movable, to enable the central space to be used for corporate events,’ says Sutton. ‘As a response to this, we are developing industrial-like flexible units on castors, which will house cased objects, graphics and models as well as digital and physical interactives.’ ‘We see the brand as an essential tool with which to capture peoples’ imaginaton. This is not just a story about Victorian engineering. The ramifications are much wider and are resonant today. The brand will have to work hard to communicate this to the widest possible audience,’ he adds.

Crossness Site

A £1m permanent exhibition, created for English Heritage by Designmap to mark Charles Darwin’s birth 150 years ago, opens tomorrow 13/02/09 at Down House, Downe, Kent.

The exhibition, in the house where Darwin spent most of his life after his voyages, is the fruit of a year-long project that Designmap undertook alongside MDM props following a four-way unpaid creative pitch.

Opening on schedule, the exhibition is located on the second floor of the Victorian house, occupying seven rooms, and is the response to a complex brief, says Designmap director Daniel Sutton. The task has been to tell Darwin’s story in a historical context, according to Sutton, while explaining and simplifying the multiple elements that constitute his theory of evolution by natural selection. 

One of the design highlights, Sutton says, is the room that aims to describe Darwin the man, by using a ‘pigeon-hole’ gridding system. ‘[The pigeon holes] are used in a metaphorical way. The matrix of objects and graphics relate to the figures that influenced Darwin and the religious figures that influenced Darwin and the religious figures that were central to the debate about evolution,’ says Sutton.

Designmap’s creation stands out from other Darwin exhibitions, such as the one at London’s Natural History Museum, because of its ‘low-tech interactivity’, says Sutton. ‘We’re telling the story of where the theories were formed and where the experiments took place. Darwin was this friendly Victorian figure, and this great earth-shattering theory was formed in humble domestic circumstances. We’ve tried to stay true to that with a lot of low-tech interactive devices,’ he explains.

English Heritage Down house site

Designmap win Medieval Maguires project at Enniskillen Castle, Northern Ireland, following a 4 way creative pitch. The exhibition is due to open Summer 2008.

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Enniskillen Castle & Museum site

Following creative submissions by nearly 100 consultancies from UK, Europe and America, Designmap were appointed by English Heritage for this prestigious project.

This Centenary exhibition at his home in the village of Down, is due to open in February 2009 which sees the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the origin of Species.

Designmap were appointed by DMG World Media to develop the graphic identity for their centenary show.

Working as part of the JJA design team we developed exterior and interior large scale graphics, linking period images taken from archive show guides, with ‘aspirational’ visions of contemporary interior products.

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