Xingyu Chen

As a designer, I try to use the environment to tell stories to build a connection between people and space. I like old places in cities because there are always stories behind them. Space is a powerful narrative vehicle because of its multidimensionality. Now, I am exploring how to apply this spatial narrative method to exhibition design.

In this project, I tried to apply a nonlinear narrative to an experimental exhibition about the novel Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino 1972), and transform the description in the novel into the atmosphere, experience, and sound in the space. Compared with an exhibition with only one fixed path, a non-linear exhibition gives visitors more possibilities to piece together and explain the content. Visitors may go around in the exhibition, and all narrative order becomes uncertain. By doing this, it gives visitors more power to express their own meaning and independent understanding in the exhibition. Besides, the project changed the traditional experience in literary exhibitions that visitors just read text while standing. The translation of the novel text into spatial scenes provides visitors with a multi-sensory interpretation.