CDHA were delighted when Casson Mann & Squint/Opera received the award for Best Exhibition Space in the 2022 Design Week Awards recently.

The overall design concept for this new permanent exhibition brings evidence ‘into the light’: galleries suffused with colour reflect how the Holocaust was carried out in ‘plain sight’. The sky blue walls and everyday sounds evoke daylight and familiarity. Affirming recent academic thinking, they dispute the myth that horrors were perpetrated under a ‘cloak of darkness’.

As the judges said, “A very difficult subject matter that was told poetically and through simple and effective design. The use of sky blue and its meaning was very effective.”

DHA was delighted to collaborate with Casson Mann and Squint /Opera to realise this intent to show that the Holocaust was not concealed or hidden away; rather, it happened in front of the world, meticulously documented by the perpetrators.

Our lighting scheme aimed to amplify this design intent, using a background illumination that gave a distinctly different to the galleries, where previous Holocaust exhibitions had been extremely dark and dramatic, the lighting here was intentionally bright and clear.