Origins | Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium

The Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium was looking to present the fabulous exhibition Origins, by photographer Olivier Grunewald and journalist Bernadette Gilbertas. Featuring 80 breathtakingly beautiful photographs, the exhibition offers a visual history of the origins of the world. The exhibition was inaugurated in an outdoor venue, the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, in 2018 but needed to be adapted to the facility hosting it. 

The exhibition context was not a conventional space but rather a set of common spaces over two levels. Therefore, our team proposed to leverage the location’s unique architecture and create new perspectives on the photographic collection. We chose to play with size and scale; certain images were magnified to generate excitement. Surfaces and architectural elements were used to display a selection of monumental images. 

In other cases, out of necessity, we created more intimate encounters with the photos bring out the full breadth and meaning of the images. Self-supporting picture rails were designed and arranged according to the groupings established to encourage this up-close-and-personal rapport. 

The journey through the immersive exhibition was broken down into four stages - Chaos, Earth, Eden, Creatures – alternating the grandiose and the intimate, like the awesome spectacle of an erupting volcano juxtaposed with the delicate beauty of a flower.