Setting up. (Increasingly) disciplinary issues

Abstract

The concept of ‘exhibition design’ has evolved towards a ‘pan-equipment’ dimension, transcending traditional notions of temporariness and reversibility to become a transdisciplinary practice. The article explores how exhibition design extends from the urban and landscape scale to industrial and domestic interiors, taking on ambiguous and sometimes oxymoronic configurations. This phenomenon is interpreted as a spatial narrative in which the relationship between container, content and display becomes dynamic and interchangeable. The analysis includes considerations on the influence of sustainability and the progressive shift of narrative value from the object to the exhibition system. Exhibition design is conceived as a macro-category encompassing architecture, art and design, emphasising aesthetic pre-figuration and post-figuration. It concludes with a reflection on its free and expressive nature, capable of fusing functionality and transcendence, and the idea that it represents a fundamental anthropological response to the human yearning for protection and meaning.