Explaining with Space: What the Eameses' Mathematica Teaches Exhibit Designers
In 1961 Charles and Ray Eames made mathematics something you walk through. The lesson for every brand stand.
In 1961 Charles and Ray Eames made mathematics something you could walk around and set in motion. This essay shows how their Mathematica exhibition explained with objects, layers and restraint. It turns that into a five-line brief for a stand that must explain, with a test for each layer and a short reading list.
Most brand stands explain a product with a screen and a script. In 1961 Charles and Ray Eames explained mathematics with objects people could walk around and set in motion. Their Mathematica exhibition, made for IBM, is still the best model for a stand that must make a hard idea clear. A visitor gives it only a few minutes.
The screen problem
The default stand explanation is a looping video and a presenter. Both ask people to stand still in a place built for walking. When nobody stops, the video plays to the carpet. The presenter waits for a crowd, and crowds only form around other crowds.
The other way is to let the idea run in the room. There it can be seen from the aisle and handled at the threshold. The Eameses tested that in 1961, and the exhibition they built is still on show.
Mathematica, Los Angeles, 1961
IBM asked the Eames Office to design part of a new science wing at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles. Mathematica: A World of Numbers... and Beyond opened there in March 1961. It filled about 3,000 square feet. It was the office's first exhibition.
It traveled. A copy went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago later in 1961. That copy moved to the Museum of Science in Boston in 1981. Another went to the IBM Pavilion at the New York World's Fair of 1964 and 1965. The Henry Ford in Dearborn acquired it in 2015. The original stayed in Los Angeles until January 1998. It is now at the New York Hall of Science in Queens.
Objects that do the explaining
Each exhibit made one idea visible and let the visitor cause it.
In the probability machine, balls fall through a field of pegs and pile up into a normal distribution. Each ball is random, but the curve is not. On the Möbius strip, a motorized arrow travels a band that has only one side. It covers all of it without crossing an edge.
The minimal surfaces exhibit dips wire frames in soap film. Each film finds the smallest surface that spans its frame. In celestial mechanics, ball bearings roll into a funnel-shaped gravity well. They orbit like planets and speed up as they near the center (The Henry Ford).
A multiplication cube and other pieces completed the set. None of these needs a caption to start working. The caption explains what the visitor has already watched happen. That order, event first and words second, is the opposite of a stand that opens with a slide.
Layers for every visitor
Mathematica worked in layers. Spectacle sat at the edge, with machines in motion that could be seen from across the room. A principle sat at the center of each exhibit. Depth waited for anyone who stayed.
The depth came in two forms. One was the History Wall, a timeline of mathematicians and their work. IBM later printed it as the Men of Modern Mathematics poster (1966) and gave it to schools. The other was a set of short films in peep-show boxes.
A stand maps onto the same three layers.
- Aisle. In Mathematica: Machines in motion, seen from across the room. On a stand: A working demonstrator visible from the aisle. Test: Do passers-by slow down?
- Threshold. In Mathematica: One principle per exhibit. On a stand: One clear principle at the stand edge. Test: Can a visitor state it after a minute?
- Table. In Mathematica: The History Wall and the films. On a stand: Depth for specialists at the meeting table. Test: Does a specialist ask a second question?
The table layer is where business happens. That is why designing a booth for conversations gives it space and calm, not another screen.
IBM in the background
IBM's name was on the exhibition. Its machines were hardly the subject. The subject was mathematics.
That is the sharpest lesson in the show. Sponsoring understanding builds the trust that a product pitch spends. The sponsor's name sits beside the moment a visitor understood something. That is a better place than beside a sales claim.
The run is the evidence. The Los Angeles original stayed on the floor from 1961 to 1998, and copies survive in three museums. Explanation ages better than promotion. Entertainment that does not carry the message fails, as why trade show booths fail when they entertain argues. Mathematica's spectacle was the message.
A brief for an explaining stand
The explanation brief has five lines.
- The one idea a visitor should leave with, in a sentence.
- The one working object that makes it happen in front of them.
- The scale. It is big enough to be seen from the aisle and close enough to be worked by hand.
- One layer of depth for specialists, at the table.
- The product as author, not subject. The brand is the one that made the idea clear.
Test each of the three layers with the questions in the table above. Do it during build-up and again on the first morning. Lissitzky's Pressa pavilion shows how to order the stations once the object exists. The usual steps of exhibition design come before and after it.
A short reading list follows.
- The Eames Institute on the Mathematica exhibition
- The surviving copies, at the Museum of Science in Boston, The Henry Ford in Dearborn and the New York Hall of Science in Queens
- The IBM Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, where the Eames film Think ran on many screens at once, the same thinking at fair scale
The idea on the floor
A stand explains best when the idea itself is on the floor, working. The brand is the one that made it understandable.
Mathematica worked because each idea had room to run on the floor. Monet can generate a booth from a prompt and show it in 3D renders and walkthrough videos in the real hall. A team can see whether the idea has room to work before anything is built.