Casson Mann and Science Museum create engineering exhibition

Engineer Your Future is a three-year exhibition opening next week in the museum’s Wellcome Wing, and will feature stories of female and male engineers, interactive game installations and objects created by engineers.

Casson Mann’s team has worked closely with the Science Museum and together, they chose developers to create the interactive displays. They appointed game studio Preloaded, animation studio Nexus and multimedia design agency Kiss the Frog. 

“There are very few objects, because we wanted people to connect through interaction and through being immersed in a game,” says Roger Mann, creative director at Casson Mann.

The exhibition is a media-based multi-user experience he says, with three interactive installations connected by a folded ribbon structure.

One installation is a teamwork game where visitors have to manage systems, such as electrical flow through the National Grid, a train through a railway network or luggage through an airport baggage system.

There is also a competitive multiplayer game where users design a vehicle to travel across a landscape, and an animation installation of a futuristic city depicting real people who work in different sectors within engineering.

Objects include a racing yacht looking at pole design and aerodynamic sail performance, a house that acts as a testing model for surviving tsunami waves, and an artificial hand controlled by the impulses of the muscles in the forearm.

Mann says that the exhibition is focused on encouraging initial interest in engineering rather than going into specifics. “It’s targeting young teenagers who probably haven’t really started thinking about what they want to do,” he says. “The gallery is principally focused on a problem-solving mind-set that unites all engineering. It’s not going into huge depth on particular fields – it’s trying to be fun and say, ‘If you’re enjoying this, then you may want to be an engineer’.”

“When you think of engineering, there’s an image of middle aged men who are quite good at maths,” he says. “The exhibition is trying to make engineering look like an exciting, sexy, interesting job to pursue, and open people’s minds to the prospect of it as a good career choice.”

Engineer Your Future will run from 17 December 2014 – December 2017 at the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2DD. Entrance is free.