Case Study

Heureka Goes Crazy, Vantaa, Finland

Finnish Science Centre, Heureka, is big on engaging with its community through both digital and physical engagement networks. This degree of collaboration helps it take a bolder stance on tough subjects, such as mental illness, in the exhibition Heureka Goes Crazy (October 2013 to September 2014). After consulting with leading psychiatrists and the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health, Heureka got in touch with former and current mental health patients, and created a group of 'peer-experts' who helped to shape the exhibition from start to finish - including approving the name in favour of injecting some humour.

'Their contribution to the planning certainly brought a great deal of realism to the exhibition,' says Tuomas Olkku, development manager. Art plays a major part in the look and feel of this exhibition, including the use of Vappu Rossi's unique paintings, applied to the interiors and furniture of booths - identical on the outside, but offering different experiences inside. Photographic portraits of people both 'sane' and mentally ill are displayed by Karoliina Bärlund, without labels, to reveal the problem's invisibility to the exterior world. Surreal miniature worlds were presented in a 'Take a Peek at the History of Insanity' exhibit, by set designer Kimmo Takala, and simple audio recordings are used to great effect.

Client Heureka, Finnish Science Centre,with Universcience, Paris and Ciencia Viva, Lisbon
Designers Mikko Kauhanen and Touko Korhonen
Artists Kimmo Takala; Karoliina Bärlund, Vappu Rossi, Pierre-Laurent Cassiére
Schedule Was in Finland and Portugal, now in Paris until August 2016

Case Study

Museum of the mind, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Beckenham

In tackling a topic as sensitive as mental illness and its treatment, Real Studios has taken a layered and thoughtful approach, with Bethlem Royal Hospital's new Museum of the Mind. In a newly refurbished and restored Edwardian administration building at the entrance to this age-old facility (its first incarnation dates back to 1247), this is the first time the hospital has had space to do justice both to its collection, which traces 750 years of mental health treatment and the phenomenal art collection it has built up.

Real Studios has devised the experience as a journey through a notional illness, inviting visitors to examine the historical shifts in understanding and medicalisation in each area. They flow logically, from Visiting Bethlem to Labelling & Diagnosis; Freedom & Constraint; Heal or Harm, to finish with Recovery?

Significant objects and artworks, as well as extensive patient and staff testimonials from across the ages, are woven into each section to enrich narrative and atmosphere and add a range of authentic voices. The most disturbing exhibits are in the Freedom & Constraint area.

Here, one room offers calming vistas out on to the landscaped gardens, next to a replica of a padded cell wall. The adjacent room displays a variety of restraints, including straitjackets, with the most barbaric-looking items partially obscured by a mirror so that the visitor really has to look for them, and in this way protects the more sensitive visitor. Technology is used in ways that immerse visitors in relevant issues.

One interactive invites you to add to the rich, historical glossary of words for various kinds of mental illness, revealing how terms can go from stigmatising to commonplace; another invites you to debate the pros and cons of home leave for a fictional patient. Two A/V installations target understanding as well as aesthetics.

In the Freedom & Constraint area, Real Studios commissioned software design outfit On101 to design the aforementioned dreamlike A/V with snippets of distant conversations and figures moving past a window, as if perceived half-asleep or perhaps through a tranquillised haze (we now disapprove of physical restraints, but are chemical ones always more humane?). In the Diagnosis area, a four-colour light installation plays over a sculptural display of medicine bottles, projecting the hues and microscopic images associated with the four 'humours' that were once thought to influence mental conditions.

Client Bethlem Royal Hospital, South London and the Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Designer Real Studios
Architect Fraser Brown MacKenna
Area 200 sq m
Cost £4m