by Timothy Mansfield, AIA

CambridgeSeven has been leading the innovation of sports museums since our early days, starting with the design of the first Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982. In those early years, visitors of traditional sports museums were accustomed to informative but passive experiences: collected memorabilia displayed behind glass, photography hung on gallery walls with informational placards, audio recordings that you stood and listened to. Walk. Stand. Look. Read. Walk. Stand. Look. Read. However, at the seminal Basketball Hall of Fame, CambridgeSeven put the ball in visitors’ hands creating immersive and engaging exhibits that forever changed the experience and expectations of sports heritage fans.

 

1982 – The Original Basketball Hall of Fame

• An early example of integrating architecture and exhibits with heroic pylon mural that announces and celebrates the new Hall at a grand scale
• Introduces life sized interactives with a variety of basketball shooting exhibits
• Multi-level experience fully embraces large format graphics

 

 

1992 – The Sports Museum of New England

• A novel multi-sport Hall of Fame that showcased the teams, players, coaches, and thrilling moments in New England sports history
• Further explores and expands the concept of immersive experiences with over-scaled exhibits and graphics that capture the visitor’s imagination and puts them “In the Game”

 

 

Since then, the design of sports museums has continued to evolve markedly to become more immersive and interactive, dynamically expressing the energy of the games themselves. CambridgeSeven’s sports heritage projects don’t simply house a collection of glass-enclosed items anymore, rather, they envelop visitors within a curated world where the boundary between architecture, exhibit and sport is blurred. With ever-advancing technology, lighting and sound engineering innovations, augmented and virtual reality, and innovative environmental graphics, sports museums aren’t just rooms of objects anymore, they are truly experiences. It’s not just somewhere you go; it’s something in which you immerse yourself.

Sports content within the museums has also evolved and expanded far beyond just physical artifacts. Museum owners and curators know they need to keep today’s visitors engaged and entertained. Exhibits now integrate themes of science, math, personal histories, politics, race, and gender – topics that resonate with visitors and reveal the far-reaching effects sports have always had on defining our cultures.

We’re rather proud of the pioneering work CambridgeSeven designers have made to advance this visitor experience –  taking it from static to electric. This timeline illustrates just how much sports museums have changed over the past 40 years and some of our forecasts about where they’re headed.