Corina Akner

To make Naturum seeable from the road and the entry points we needed a big communicating entrance. Through doubling the roof height and replacing 2 of the 8 walls with glass we get a different approachand and insigt to the turist office. A big laminated screen is handing in the ceiling and can be used to show movies both inside and outside. The pinecone trees by the entrance is a way of bringing nature in and purchasing sprouts can be a cute souvenir from Ånge.

This is overall pictures of our project and our final work, with thumbnails of some of the solutions we came up with to show how to make the interactive park and information possible

Here is the whole rapport in Swedish as a PDF, otherwise some of the best photos are displayed in this slide show below with english descriptions
View PDF

When you enter the traffic "rest stop" Borgsjöbyn in Ånge, you experience a restaurant and Naturum, but mainly this is a gas station for cars and trucks. Most of the rest stop is just drive through and turning spaces. We made a lot of changes to make the whole place feel like it's made for humans and not vehicles. Traffic islands were changed in form and size to minimize the driving lanes and the purple area on the picture illustrates material changes in the ground level to distinguish driving lanes from the parking places

A stylisation of a moose, the king of the forest, in full size

A stylisation of the natural way the soil and earth cleans our water. This is an interactive model where you can play and dig to learn while exploring. The water falls down from the roof in a waterfall

An interactive station where the visitors can play with a helmet with horns, butting with each other or the bulls eye on the tree. This is an embodied studie of a moose and is also a fun station for photographing and socialising

Instead of having the exhibition inside, we moved it outside and tried working with snow resistant solutions. For example, there will be a rapid chute leading a stream of water through the park. We want to keep the theme of interaction throughout the whole park and activate visitors' senses, not only by vision, but also by seeing for example by hearing a mechanic birds picking on the stem bringing attention to our concept

Naturum has to illustrate local history besides biodiversity, so we had to find a way to display history aspectsin the park. We buildt a charcoal kiln and since tar was a natural byproduct from the charcoal kiln in the old days, we turned it into a scented station with the smell of tar and coal. By letting smoke come out of the kiln to simulate the real process, we wanted to give our visitors a more active experience. Using an intersection we show the specific technique used in original kilns, by lretting people go in station also works as a wind shelter with benches inside.

To display rock and soil, a big rock / piece of a mountain serves as an echo station. We wanted to mimic natures grandeur and to communicate the magnificent presence standing in a mountain pass, large enough to enhance the slightest sound to echo

Interactive signs with a deviant look and format of a tree stem, gives the visitor a hint that there is something abnormal with this tree, and when you approach it something will happen. We wanted to illustrate nature and for example the way that the trees work as natures´s lungs by letting a stem blow on you when you pass a sensor. There will also be slots with information placed inside the stems, where you can see for example bark beetles and the way they eat and live in the bark

To put the information in context and make it less compact, the park is divided into stations with nature, water and soil as themes. These stations have signs that show examples of overall and detailed information as well as information about the human impact, with both text and pictures to make the information easier to assimilate

Throughout the park, there will be signs combined with related exhibits and stations and they will follow you on your walk in our park. Here is an illustration of the blowing tree after the censor is passed

To bring our visitors down to Ljungan, the river running through Ånge, which is 150 meters away from the parking lot, we placed a cabin by the water. With semiotic similarities of the new entrance of the main house, this is a place to relax and enjoy nature in place. There are binoculars, barbecue possibilities and information about local fish and birds

To help promote Ånge township for what it is, we believe the way to go is to show the driven people and the energy that exists in them. The life away from traffic and stress doesn't mean it's uneventful, it just contains different kinds of activities. Since the nature is so close a lot of people engages in conservation, fisheries management and hunting. Our idea is to create picture material, through a reporter, like a blog. The cabin is portable, since it's only 15 square meters, so our reporter shows up with the cabin at events and activities in Ånge, where the people who are the driving power in the region can get interviewed and give their opinion and explain why they love and live in Ånge. The reporter participates in the activities and makes videos, takes photos and writes the information for the posters in the exhibition to make sure there is consistent information. In this way we want to achieve direct communication from sender to receiver without polishing the edges.

This cabincan also be used in the marketing of Ånge in job fairs and lectures around Sweden. Here the reporters documented material can be displayed to show the "real" picture of Ånge that we want to promote, since we have full confidence in the product that Ånge really represents with nature and lifestyle

Easy solutions will alow animals to exist in the area to a large extent. By allowing wild life in the park we create possible meetings, but not everyone will get to see the wild life. When for example a high stick in a field (like the picture shows) creates a good resting and hunting place for an eagle, a visitor that is lucky and aware to get to see a wild bird here, will have a great benefit from this meeting

After entering the new entrance to the main building you are greeted by a screen where our reporter's work is displayed with short films, pictures and parts of interviews to create curiosity and lead them further into the building. By hinting about the experience and showing professional material from a first person view with the experience at first hand, we want to make our visitor seek more information and of course create a desire in them to experience the same thing in real life

Further in the building we have created stations where we divided the activities into groups of for example fishing and hiking, to make it more comprehensible to choose between all the tourist agency brochures. Here we have audio guides, the reporter's material with interviews, movies and pictures as well as interactive material with touch screens to navigate with, while they search for experiences and finding spots to visit throughout Ånge

To really make it easy for our visitors to orient among all the information, we have created a quiz in which we let the visitors influence the results and personalize them. By choocing their own knowledge level and for example in the fish station the later questions are related to what type of fish you want to catch, if the place you are looking for has to be family-friendly and how far from Naturum you are interested in travelling to reach your goal

This picture is from inside the house where you can see the water fall from the roof down into the water stairs and keep an eye on for example your kids playing outside while reading brochures, interacting with one of the stations, talking to the tourist office staff or looking at souvenirs