Event reveals plans for Kuwait oil museum

Exhibition design consultancy Event Communications is masterplanning and designing the interiors of Kuwait’s first museum dedicated to oil and gas.

The exhibition will include 4m-high spouts of real fire and smoke, intended to convey the devastation caused by oil-well fires during the 1991 Gulf War.

Kuwait Oil Company gave the green light to Event’s designs for the three-floor museum, including a 180-degree film projection and an oil-drilling platform, two weeks ago.

‘We have been very theatrical in our approach, showing the power of oil and the oil industry, and explaining what it takes to find and exploit oil, and create products from it,’ says Event partner Steve Simons.

KOC appointed Event two years ago, following a pitch against Imagination and Met Studio, among others.

‘The brief was very free – KOC merely stipulated that it should explore the history of oil development in Kuwait, KOC and the industry today,’ says Simons.

‘We added to the brief that the museum should engage the youth of Kuwait in the oil industry and encourage them to join it. Because there is no great tourism industry in Kuwait, it is very important that we create the museum for the people of Kuwait,’ he adds.

On entering the exhibition, visitors will be given radio-frequency identification tags that communicate with an ‘interactive spine’ of exhibits. Event plans to give users a series of virtual encounters with oil workers, including a geoscientist, a tanker pilot and a fire-fighter.

Depending on their performance in various challenges, the visitor is then told which of these professions they would be most suited to.

The new KOC Oil and Gas Exhibition opens in mid-2011. It will inhabit a new building, to be sited near the KOC headquarters in Al Ahmadi. The exhibition will replace the small display centre in the KOC offices.