Designing for the Wellcome Collection's new Institute of Sexology

London’s Wellcome Collection space always hosts explorations of the things that fascinate us most. It’s covered death, it’s exhaustively explored the human body in all its glory and grotesquery, and now it’s moved on to surely the most fascinating of all – sex, or more precisely, how people have studied it.

The Institute of Sexology show that opens this week is billed as a “candid exploration of the most publicly discussed of private acts,” imploring visitors to “undress your mind” through some brilliant bright yellow marketing materials and a book, designed in house at the Wellcome Collection by Liam Relph and Marianne Dear under the direction of John Morgan studio. If you live in east London it’s likely you’ve seen, or perhaps participated in said marketing campaign – a huge billboard on Old Street has been inviting passers by to note their own responses to questions about their sex lives. According to the Wellcome Collection, “there are crosses drawn in lip stick and eye liner, arrows and explanations, people who have given their nationalities or left cheeky comments.”

The exhibition design and graphics have been taken care of by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects and John Morgan Studio respectively, helping us navigate though more than 200 objects including art, film and photographers, erotica and archival material.

Collectively, the exhibits look to give an overview of how sex has been scientifically analysed or used as a catalyst for creativity since the 19th century, exploring the works of such diverse characters as psychoanalysis godfather Sigmund Freud, scientist Marie Stopes, artist John Stezaker and biologist Alfred Kinsey, who carried out comprehensive sex surveys, publishing the results in books during the mid 20th century.

We had a chat with Olaf Kneer, Casper Mueller Kneer Architects co-founder, about designing for such a fascinating show.

What was the brief for the design of the space?

It was quite open – the curatorial direction was very strong it’s about the study of sex and “sexology” rather than sex, so there’s a historic context that runs up to it with pieces from the Wellcome’s own collection. There’s historic and primitive objects, literature, other texts… It’s an exploration on how to study sex seriously from around 100 years ago, arranged in chronological order to modern times.

You worked with John Morgan studio on the exhibition graphics – what was the design thinking behind those?

They’re very restrained, simple graphics. We felt working through the process that we constantly reduced, simplified and reduced again the amount of graphics and the level of detail. John used a very typographical, text-based approach. As a team we took the idea of “institute” very seriously, so we used labels you might find from old institute research documents. There’s a lot of colour coding, so an object might be marked with a brown dot, which corresponds to a number; or a metal pin beside an object to create the idea of layering information just like you’d have in an archive were you label a folder with a sticker, then another layer comes along years later when the system changes.

John Morgan studio: There will be response cards on which people are invited to write a caption for an object. We only used one typeface throughout but there is a blackboard in the last section, which is a convenient way for the staff to list events for example, and might also be used during these events. The title of each section is handwritten, which is a nod to all these bits of handwriting you would indeed find in an archive.

How did you negotiate creating an exhibition design where many of the pieces displayed are perhaps quite academic and text based, as well as showing traditionally “museum-like” objects?

A lot of the objects are very beautiful so it wasn’t that difficult or challenging. The various graphs and things are super interesting if you read the information. It was more of a challenge in terms of how it all comes together because of how diverse it is – there’s little figurines, grass skirts, interviews and AV pieces, so the approach was to have a very rigorous display system.

Can you describe how that structure works to guide the viewer through the space?

There’s a very strict wall and display system made of valchromat, which is a type of MDF in a slate colour that changes all the way through so it’s not homogenous. That gives a path, creating a beginning and an end using a sequence of vitrines. Each one is shaped specifically to hold its contents.

What other pieces did you create specially for the show?

We made a lot of individually designed furniture pieces, like Freud’s desk and chair. You can engage with it by walking round the desk. We made a Marie Stopes section too, and several other bespoke pieces of display furnitre. The AV elements are very simple, there’s some spoken word on headphones and some talking heads, but it’s quite restrained.