Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles

Bangkok, Thailand

2012

Housed in the Grand Palace, which is the historic royal palace that has been completely and luxuriously renovated in Italian style, this museum has a rich collection of the queen’s clothing. These are pieces from the 1970s to today from French designer Pierre Balmain along with a wide collection of textiles from the Queen’s Foundation, which has always worked to preserve and promote the country’s traditional textile-making techniques.

Building design: Jai Siriatumrong (DSDI Inc.), Bangkok

Exhibition design: Tim Culbert, Celia Imrey, New York

The challenge

The display cases we were asked to engineer were diverse in terms of shape, movement and size. These were works of great complexity able to offer an unusual and dynamic look at the pieces, recreating, for example, the movement of the dresses on immobile mannequins, offering three-dimensional effects, making displayed objects seemingly appear or disappear or offering suggestive interactions with the museum’s exterior.

The solution

Goppion’s display cases are highly technological and realized with special materials. They contain (and conceal) their high-performance systems considering the delicate and precious pieces on display: internal lighting, climate control (active and passive) and security systems. The knowing use of colors (yellow and sky blue, symbolic colors in Thailand), the precious materials and finishings along with the technological design make for a suggestive interaction with the old architecture of the building.