V&A, Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature

From 2020 to 2022, we worked with the V&A to design an exhibition celebrating the life of esteemed children’s author Beatrix Potter. The exhibition narrative follows the trajectory of Potter’s life, from the confines of her childhood in Victorian London to her later life in the Lake District, exploring not only the places and animals that inspired her most beloved characters but also her accomplishments as a scientist and conservationist.

The exhibition design was structured around a grid, based on the dimensions of Potter’s little books, playing with the scale of the familiar ratio throughout the space. The exhibition graphics are conceived to sit at the intersection of the real and imagined worlds, suggesting just enough but never too much, allowing visitors to imagine the rest. We were able to draw upon our collective skill set to suggest these hidden worlds by bringing together complex 3D modelling and animation with appropriate material choices to create an effortlessly magical experience. There were no visible screens anywhere in the exhibition; instead, we used them to enable the illusion of creatures moving behind semi-translucent sheets of paper.

Supporting this analogue approach to AV, we placed some of Potter’s onomatopoeic expressions around the space, encouraging an analogue soundscape created by visitors reading them out loud.