HIYORIYAMA COAST MUSEUM by NOMURA Co., Ltd
Name of Company or Individual: NOMURA Co., Ltd
Country: Japan
Website: https://www.nomurakougei.co.jp/
Project Name: HIYORIYAMA COAST MUSEUM
Project Completion Date: 4/20/2019
Project Completed City: HYOGO
Interior Division: Institution
In 2019, Hiyoriyama Coast Museum opened in the GeoPark located in Hyogo Pref., north-west of Honshu Island, Japan, adjacent to the Kinosaki Marine World - a marine research aquarium facility with 300 species in 7,000 varieties being nurtured, bred and protected. The museum exhibits the work of the species preservation and learnings from life in nature and aims to protect the earth's wild animals and pass them on to the next generation.
We contributed in the overarching creative direction, from developing a business concept, basic plan, architecture, interior space, exhibition, signage, outdoor space, and admission ticket design. Nomura’s high design quality manifested the Museum’s dedicated attitude towards life and disseminated it to visitors and improved the brand value of Kinosaki Marine World.
The exhibition concept of the Museum is "Storyteller” – communicate stories by zookeepers on reproductive activities that sustain lives.
Our focus was to illuminate only the essence of information we want to deliver by elaborating on the balance of the entire space size, space between the texts, colour, moulding tone, and signage. We took advantage of its location along the coast and had the gallery space incorporated the Sea of Japan through the window as a borrowing landscape into a living-exhibit. The footbath bench using the local hot spring represented unique hospitality, offering the panoramic sea view.
We capitalized on the long and narrow museum space and created two-side exhibitions. At a set interval, room lights slowly are turned off and a 30 x 5m wall projection shows breeding activities of local Stork. It is a moving story of the community's efforts to return stork to the wild, along with the beautiful local landscape.
For impactful communication of storytelling, zookeepers’ passion for reproduction work is summarized in a series of concise copy, or Haiku, complemented by the impressive graphic.
We paid careful considerations to the message text, exhibition explanation, captions, and video contents, in a common format so they read and sound as if the zookeepers were talking to the visitors in person.
