Exhibition design forms part of the experience industry. Here, the emotional takes precedence over the utilitarian. Intelligent, nuanced, aesthetically precise design transforms an exhibition into an exciting, memorable event. It gives visible form to curatorial thinking and highlights key messages.
Wowhaus takes on exhibitions that pose intriguing challenges or reveal fascinating narratives. For us, any project—regardless of scale—is essentially a journey, a sequence of experiences, and this is basically the only way to design an exhibition.
Design offers a compelling means of exploring the very nature of architecture itself. The Wowhaus exhibition at Berlin’s Architektur Galerie was precisely such an experiment: an amphitheatre constructed within the gallery's intimate space became a platform for dialogues about design and the public role of architecture. It hosted discussions, lectures, Berlinale screenings, and other events.
For the My Neighbourhood Forum at Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor trade exhibition centre, we built a city in miniature, complete with market stalls, an open-air cinema, and playgrounds. Visitors could also explore the future urban renewal projects.
Our total installation about Fashion Futures was set in a VDNKh pavilion during Moscow Fashion Week. The 1950s colonnades and ornamental elements were complemented by futuristic objects, industrial materials, and deliberately brutal forms. The resulting cyberpunk aesthetic highlighted the dichotomy between past and future.
Wowhaus has developed a special relationship with GUM department store on Red Square: since 2008, we have been responsible for their Christmas decorations. Working in a shopping centre where every brand vies for attention presents its own challenges—one needs the ornaments to be perceived as distinct statements within an endless sequence of dazzling impressions. We address this issue through shifts in scale, paradoxical devices, lighting, and artistic gestures. Our solution is to juxtapose concision to abundance.
Our practice has also designed the GUM Red Line art project: in 2019, it was hosted within the shopping galleries, and in 2021 it expanded to Red Square, where it was renamed Red Garden. In both instances, contemporary art was placed in an unexpected context—within spaces visited not only by a prepared audience, but by people who shop or simply come to have lunch. We provided the backdrop for works by Pavel Pepperstein, Irina Korina, AES+F, and public art pieces by Nikolai Polissky, Dmitry Zhukov, and Aristarkh Chernyshev. The design had to capture the attention of passers-by while preventing the art from getting lost next to shop windows and richly decorated façades. Red-grey display cases of strict geometry contrasted with the building’s neo-Russian aesthetic and drew the eye.
Our most recent project is the Technology Centre in Tobolsk. We were commissioned by Sibur Holding to create a centre that would engage schoolchildren, young people, and tourists with petrochemicals, the core local industry. It is an insightful narrative about chemistry as the science of magic and an essential part of human life—from the structure of the Universe to synthetic materials. The exhibition unfolds within a former wine warehouse, breaking free from its surroundings: visitors feel transported into a future realm.
Oleg Shapiro: “When making exhibitions, we typically assume one of two roles. Either we are simply the designers, interpreting the curatorial message through our solutions. Or we act as initiators, curators, organisers, and exhibition designers—which is the rarest and yet the most agreeable disposition.”
