Open Space Museum
The Open Space Museum (OSM) is a modular, portable exhibition platform designed to bring artistic, cultural, and research-based content into public and alternative spaces.
Developed and tested through a full-scale installation in Basel, the OSM combines modular architecture, interactive Case Study Elements, Social Elements, and digital Engagement Applications to create accessible environments for cultural encounter, participation, and reflection.
Rather than reproducing the conventional museum outdoors, the OSM creates a different kind of cultural space: open, informal, interactive, and integrated into everyday public life. Visitors can encounter cultural content while also meeting, sitting, talking, playing, exploring, and spending time within the installation.
The OSM can be adapted in collaboration with museums, cultural institutions, festivals, municipalities, universities, artists, researchers, and other project partners. Collections, artworks, cultural narratives, research questions, themes, and locations can become the basis for new physical and digital experiences.
Cultural, Social & Digital
The Open Space Museum brings together three interconnected experiential layers within a common modular architectural framework.
Cultural & Interpretive — Case Study Elements
Case Study Elements transform artworks, museum objects, research, and cultural narratives into physical experiences that encourage observation, movement, play, reflection, and participation.
Human & Social — Social Elements
Social Elements provide places for sitting, resting, conversation, observation, and informal exchange. They allow visitors to slow down, spend time within the museum, and engage with both the cultural content and one another.
Digital — Engagement Applications
Browser-based Engagement Applications extend the physical experience through interpretation, image, sound, movement, interaction, and participatory media. They can be accessed directly through visitors' own mobile or desktop devices without requiring dedicated software.
The digital layer is continuing to develop and now includes conversational artificial intelligence, creating new possibilities for visitors to ask questions and engage directly with cultural and research-based content.
Basel 2026 — Built, Tested & Open to the Public
In 2026, the Open Space Museum was assembled at full scale, tested, and opened to the public in Basel, Switzerland. This marked an important transition from design and prototyping to a realized exhibition platform.
During the four-week public presentation, approximately 500 visitors experienced the OSM, with guided tours offered twice daily. The installation provided an opportunity to observe how visitors moved through, interacted with, and spent time within the combination of cultural and social spaces.
The Basel phase also enabled the team to test and refine the complete structural system, Case Study Elements, Social Elements, accessibility, visitor flow, and practical procedures for assembly, dismantling, packing, transport, and storage.
Following the Basel presentation, the OSM was dismantled and packed into custom-built transport crates. It is now entering its next phase of development and is available for future collaborations and presentations.
A Platform for Collaboration
The Open Space Museum is not conceived as a single fixed exhibition. It is an adaptable platform that can evolve from one location and partnership to another.
Existing Case Study Elements, Social Elements, Demonstrators, and Engagement Applications can be combined with newly developed material to create an installation responding to a particular collection, cultural theme, research question, audience, event, or location.
For museums and collection-based institutions, the OSM can extend collections and interpretation beyond conventional exhibition architecture. For festivals, universities, municipalities, and other partners, an installation can instead be developed around artistic programs, research, local history, community themes, or public-space initiatives.
Collaborations can range from individual OSM elements and smaller OSM Transforms to a larger configuration of the complete Open Space Museum.
Acknowledgment
The Open Space Museum was conceptualized and designed by Arthur Clay in collaboration with Dario Lanfranconi and Chiara Gemma Fedon at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU).
Within the PERCEIVE project, N55 was initially engaged with a design scope related to the Open Museum. Proposals and sketches were produced during this phase; however, these were not implemented in the realized system.
The Open Space Museum, as built and exhibited, was independently developed, including its structural logic, node system, and assembly principles. These were defined through an iterative design and prototyping process led by Arthur Clay and the OSM team.
© Arthur Clay