ROM: Dawn of Life
Overview
Vibrant, immersive and hands-on, Dawn of Life takes visitors on a journey back 4 billion years to the origins of life on Earth. It explores the extraordinary beginnings and crushing extinctions that have formed life on our planet.
Details
- Client
- Royal Ontario Museum
- Project
- Willner Madge Gallery, Dawn of Life
- Size
- 10,000 sq. ft.
- Scope
- Exhibit Design
- Location
- Toronto, ON, CA
- Year Completed
- 2021
- Budget
- $4,500,000
The
Goal
The new gallery at the ROM is a global leader in paleontological display. By utilizing the Museum’s extensive collections of over a hundred real fossil specimens and its renowned research team, the gallery comprehensively connects the history of our dynamic Earth to the evolution and chronology of life. The gallery takes special care to highlight the Canadian story of these fossils, including the world-renowned marine fossil discoveries and UNESCO world heritage sites. Prominent collections, such as the Burgess Shale, are highlighted as essential to our understanding of early animal life. Visitors will experience contemporary science through diverse, engaging, and varying media, allowing them to explore new discoveries and ideas.
The
Design
The Dawn of Life gallery is designed as a chronological story that guides visitors through the 4-billion-year history of life on Earth. Visitors follow the swirling ribbon of time, suspended from the ceiling, that unfolds across the L-shaped gallery space, depicting the evolution of life as it spirals through different geologic periods. The ribbon’s journey is accented by “Evolutionary Game Changers,” callouts which highlight innovations that radically altered life on Earth such as the development of the first land creature, or boney jay, or evidence of photosynthesis. This forms the interpretive backbone of the gallery and is complemented using unique interactive moments such as a touchable four-billion-year-old rock and a virtual journey through a Cambrian-era seabed where ancient creatures swim and hunt before visitors’ eyes. At various points in its journey, the ribbon is almost severed by four red, jagged constructions representing major mass extinction events in our Earth’s history.
Children can crawl through the largest of these mass extinctions, coming face to face with burrowing creatures whose underground adaptations helped them survive this tumultuous time. With the journey of life beginning underwater, a deep blue palette and curving cases move fluidly through the space. As animals and plants move from water to land, the blue, organic design shifts to greens and browns, angular land formations, and lush wall murals.
The
Result
From abundant fossil exhibits to innovative, spell-binding displays, the gallery is a visitor-centric experience that explores the strange and wonderful history of life on Earth. It features one of the world’s most formidable fossil collections in immersive displays, highlighting the many fossils from the ‘national treasure’ UNESCO World Heritage fossil sites throughout Canada, and is rich with hands-on interactive moments that delight and inspire. Highlights include a life-sized 6m bronze walk-in Dunkleosteus. Visitors enter its belly and look out from behind its massive jaws—like its prey did, hundreds of millions of years ago. Educational and engaging, this gallery is filled with fun spots to explore and take many photos. Its rich displays and vibrant visuals successfully reflect the joyful explosion of life that occurred throughout the beginning and evolution of life on earth.
