Design of Fossil Interpretation Center

 at GEER Foundation (for NID)- Gandhinagar

Fossils as we see them today are not able to communicate their history to us as much as they do to the archeologists. This was the main issue to be dealt with in this project. The Gujarat Ecological Education and Research (GEER) foundation in Gandhinanagar wanted to improve their communication about fossils to their visitors. In the existing park site, a lot of information was disseminated however the context of the fossils was not easily understood by the audience. Our job as designers here was to create a "FOSSIL INTERPRETATION CENTER" which would help visitors understand about fossils and dinosaurs in a more lucid and natural manner.

The Process

The process began with an initial understanding of the key issues in interpretation of the current park.After understanding the key issues from the visitors, local guides and officers a detailed mapping was done. This was followed by a presentation to the commitee to portray what could be the design opportunities in developing the fossil interpretation center.Field trips to various interpretation centers and museums were done to understand the possibilities. A detailed information hierarchy was then chalked out for each of the experience zones of the park. Taking into account all initial inputs a narrative storyline of the possible experience in the park was created.This was further detailed into visualizations and zone experience details. . The center is currently underconstruction with the proposed design.