The Holocaust Gallery wins best exhibition at the 2022 Design Week Awards

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.

Tiffany: Vision & Virtuosity at the Saatchi Gallery


Our latest project for Tiffany, the Vision & Virtuosity exhibition, or ‘a journey through 185 years of innovation, craftsmanship and heritage’ has opened at the Saatchi Gallery on London’s King’s Road.

The exhibition is a magnificent tour of Tiffany’s history, showcasing not only the in-house jewellery skills that have made them justly famous worldwide, but also the remarkable collaborations with other designers and creators that has kept them at the forefront of creativity since they were founded in New York in 1837.

With over 400 objects and seven exhibition sections to explore, the exhibition really does showcase the incredible range of craftsmanship the company has produced – not only in diamond jewellery, but in silverware & of course, iconic Tiffany lamps.

DHA worked with the set designers, Agence NC & video designers, La Meduse to produce seven very different rooms, each one dedicated to a key part of Tiffany’ history, from a study of their collaboration with key designers of their renowned window displays, to the role the company plays in Truman Capote’s novella, and later film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s that provided the best-known role for Audrey Hepburn: displays include her iconic Givenchy dress, the script he used and even a first draft of Capote’s novella.

The exhibition runs until the 9th August at the Saatchi Gallery, and remarkably, the exhibition is free; tickets are booked on the Saatchi app that can be downloaded from various app stores & also acts as your digital guide to the exhibition once you are there.

Holocaust Galleries shortlisted at 2022 Design Week Awards

We are delighted that our recent project with Casson Mann has been shortlisted in the Spaces category for the 2022 Design Week Awards. You can view the complete shortlist here, & while we can see the gallery is up against some great competition, we are confident the sensitive approach to this most difficult of stories to tell will be recognised by the judges.

The winners will be revealed at the end of June, so we will have to wait patiently until then, but in the meantime, congratulations to Casson Mann, Squint/Opera and all of the curators, makers, conservators, contractors and interpretation specialists we worked with to bring these spaces to life.

Oman & the World: A Musical Journey opens in Muscat

Our latest project with 59Productions, Oman & the World opened at the Royal Opera House in Muscat on the 1st June.

This wonderfully rich and immersive exhibition ‘charts the story of music in a rich and immersive journey from sounds appearing in nature, through the science and techniques of instrumentation, to the role music plays in our societies and inside each of us’ (59Productions). Music was a key interest of the late Sultan of Oman, and the exhibition is a tribute to his passion for musical arts; not only those of Oman, but also internationally & how he was keen to bring world-class musicians to Oman to perform in the Opera House.

As part of the exhibition team, DHA were tasked with creating all of the object, graphic and show sequence lighting across a number of spaces to bring the exhibition to life. We worked closely with the exhibition designers, plus the sound designers (Coda to Coda) to ensure the lighting was tightly integrated with all of the design elements. As the architectural spaces were so carefully detailed, standard track solutions were rejected in favour of a carefully plotted ceiling array that made use of a beautiful ceiling design that also functioned as an acoustic panel system – very important in a space that featured music and sound throughout.

As expected from 59Productions theatrical focus, two key immersive spaces were created for the exhibition as the first and last visitor experiences: here DHA worked with the audio-visual and sound designers to create show sequences that supported the content, changing the lighting to support the audio environment.

Holocaust & Second World War Galleries win at Museum + Heritage Awards 2022

Gary Shelley of Casson Mann holds the award

We were delighted when our clients at the Imperial War Museum accepted the trophy for the Best New Permanent Gallery at the 2022 Museum + Heritage Awards at on the 11th May. As they said at the time, ‘This has been so much more than a job‘. Indeed, it has: so many compelling stories, artefacts and personal effects from a complete V1 flying bomb to cap badges present a completely new view of the second major conflict of the Twentieth Century.

The Holocaust Galleries in particular rewrite the rules on presenting such a harrowing narrative: before the emphasis has been on sombre, dark spaces; here, Casson Mann fill the galleries with light to show that the events of the Holocaust were not hidden, but done in plain sight, witnessed by so many people at the time, creating a completely new impression of both the perpetrators and their victims. By comparison, the World War 2 Galleries emphasise the human scale of the war, with many individual stories creating a compelling timeline of the conflict.

We were delighted to work with the client team of directors, curators, conservators & interpretation specialists to give each object, text and image its proper place & visibility in these complex spaces.

We want to express our thanks to the two design companies, Casson Mann & Ralph Applebaum Associates, who made us part of their design teams to deliver these stories – exhibition design is a complex & involved process; we only feed into a small part of the machinery that delivers the finished project, but we very happy to involved in every step of the way, from concept to commissioning.

The response to the galleries has been overwhelmingly positive: The Times described the design as ‘compelling’, the Telegraph, ‘a tremendous achievement’ & the Guardian, ‘stimulating, sensitive & humane’.