The London-based practice OMMX has designed a major exhibition for the V&A Museum after being appointed to help the museum reach net zero by 2030. The exhibition, The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence, celebrates the extraordinary creative output and internationalist culture of the Golden Age of the Mughal Court (c 1560–1660) during the reigns of its most famous emperors: Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Curated across two large galleries, the exhibition design is based on Mughal Miniatures, which often portray scenes of flat meandering walls and geometric openings behind foregrounded characters.

Alongside AA alumni and tutors Jon Lopez and Hikaru Nissanke (current and former tutors respectively), Zeena Ismail (AA alum) and Isabella Synek Herd (assistant designer of AA exhibition Portraits of Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long) designed an exhibition system that can be transformed across two exhibitions to minimise waste. This system wears its procurement lightly, and is subtle in its environmental approach, presenting a fresh take on sustainable exhibition design.

Described as ‘dazzling’ by both The Guardian and The Telegraph, the exhibition's innovative build conceals services inside a set of constructed modules, enabling the rapid, total and inexpensive transformation into the V&A’s next exhibition, Marie Antoinette, with very little downtime in between.

Alongside OMMX, the design team included Kellenberger-White (Graphic Design), Studio ZNA (Lighting Design), Coda to Coda (Sound Design), setWorks (Exhibition build) and Blue Elephant (AV Hardware).

Read more on the websites of OMMX and the V&A Museum.

Image: The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence, V&A Museum. Credit: Max Creasy.