Design for Wukro

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It is almost one year ago that we packed our bags and took our jurney to Wukro. We miss beautiful Ethiopia and the Wukro Museum! Until we meet again, we have a video. It shows the development of the work in restoration/conservation and exhibition design and accompanies in our all day life until the museum was opened – A great making-of! Thank you, Tony Jankowski (camera) and Julie Künzel (postproduction)!

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The HTW Berlin (University of Applied Sciences) participated at the “State of Design” festival this week. The motto was "Fundamental Questions" and different former and current students exhibited their projects. The Wukro Museum has also been part of it: We shared some pictures and stories of our internship in Wukro and told about the interdisciplinary work and new grown friendships.

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The German newspaper “Tagesspiegel” wrote an article about our project. Klick here to read it:

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/archaeologisches-museum-wukro-mit-deutscher-hilfe-ein-haus-fuer-aethiopiens-antike/12451648.html#

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During our internship Tony took a lot of pictures. He soon will release an own blog with his impressions of Ethiopia, but he already gave us a preview.

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When all the packages full of postcards arrived at the Wukro Museum, Anja was very excited. She has photographed some of the covers and designed twelve different versions for the museum shop.

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Plots of the logo were already produced in Berlin. We affixed them on the cleaned windows a few days before the opening. The procedure was quiet tricky but now the logo decorates the windows and glas doors of the museum.

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During the last weeks before the opening of the Wukro Museum the garden in the inner court was designed and built by the St. Mary’s College. Until our trip back to Germany we were able to see it grow day by day.

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To beautify the bald walls of the museum shop we printed some photos and illustrations we made and hanged them at the walls.

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On sunday we were invited to the Galerie Listros Berlin. The Society for the Promotion of Museums in Ethiopia had a big meeting there to inform the members about the opening of the Wukro Museum. We showed pictures of our work and told everyone about our internship. We were so happy to finally meet again many people who have been to Wukro with us together!

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Laura made signs for the museum. She had a lot to do. First she needed to organize old signs and clean them. Then she coloured the signs in the blue of the corperate design. After the colour dried she used a stencil, placed it on the signs and sprayed the logo and the text on it. At least she removed the stencil carefully. And now everyone in Wukro can see the signs and can find the way to the museum easily.

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In the exhibition room there are banners telling the stories of the finds. Furthermore two banners at the entrance welcome the visitors in tigrinia and english and five banners in the inner court inform about the history of the museum, the archaeological sites and about the process of the exhibition design and restoration. Adequate to each banner there is a text panel in tigrinia and english, which can be taken out of the shelf. So the visitors can read them for further informationen while walking through the exhibition. It was very interesting to work together with a printing office from Addis Ababa on the planing and implementation of this important print material. Nearly the whole team was included in the completion of the banners and panels. Text editorial, photographs, layout, shelf constructions, … we worked on it for about eight weeks and we are very satisfied with the result.

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Exactly one month ago the Wukro Museum opened. There are some pictures of the opening ceremony and the exhibition hall we don’t want to withhold. These photos are taken from the archaeologist Dr. Pawel Wolf.

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Another item from the museum shop is high quality incense from the Tambien market. A great souvenir from Ethiopia!

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Very soon you will be able to buy handmade soaps in the museum shop. The soaps are made out of local products by the St. Mary's College Wukro and Anja designed beautiful lables for all of the flavours.

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Every single visitor was highly impressed by the ensemble of the complex restored machines. After years of hard work they look very aesthetically and makes everybody wants to understand the history as well as how the generator works. That is what the exhibition design tries to serve. It was a highly difficult challenge to bring the complex function of the generator to a simple explanation and design. A three-layer-information system was developed with little infographics/wallpaintings, short texts and broschures with detailed information. The exhibitiondesign is very clean and chary, adapted to the technical look of the museum's architecture. The Generator builing is under way to be a center of technical education.

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Exactly 13 weeks ago for some of our team members the journey to Wukro started. Since then so many good things have happened and we reached many milestones. The time went by extremly fast and the Wukro Museum is now opened. By now everyone has arrived well and savely in the cold wintry Germany and it seems like a really short time ago that we started out. We had a wonderful time and we thank everyone, who is involved in this great project! We are looking forward to everything which is going to happen in the further development of the museum. (On the picture from the left in the back to the right in the front: Prof. Katrin Hinz, Anja Groß, Rebecca Kopiecki, Ann-Marie Groß, Johanna Hübner, Laura Klein, Tony Jankowski and Ronny Jaßmann.)

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Prof. Birgit Bauer and her daughter Rosa arrived one day before the opening. Right in time to arrange the museum shop.