Abstract

The research explores and maps the emerging phenomena in exhibition design, assuming that architecture—as a spatial issue and technology—as tool of expansion of multimodal experiences—is giving way to more intangible assets and values to redefine its methodology and culture. That means knowledge convergence among material and digital culture, design and humanities, ux and designer intention, bottom-up and top-down approaches. This implies to open a laboratory of transition from a planning/spatial vision to a storytelling approach that reads the metanarrative of an ostensive route like a script and to elaborate the digital revolution deeply impacting on the show-machine of an exhibition bringing the mobile web in the space staged. That means to assume that people are no more passive but interact and perform their own experience, giving personal meanings and interpretative perspectives. The paper illustrates this hypothesis reviewing some emerging and outstanding case studies in the contemporary field of exhibition design to identify and infer the emerging trend in experimental and professional practices. The cultural transition suggest an evolution of the designer role, from a conceptual and projective act of ideation and reification to a directing act involving transcultural knowledge to shape a performing environment.