The museum in Lausanne was completely remodelled and doubled in size to create three permanent galleries called Olympic World, Olympic Games and Olympic Spirit. Two new spaces are devoted to rotating temporary exhibitions, and the museum fully integrates with the onsite Olympic Studies Centre.
The museum welcomed
people in the first four weeks of opening.
Our brief was to take the vast Olympic collections and re-interpret and present them in a more modern, innovative and accessible way to engage visitors. Working alongside the Olympic Museum team, we selected objects and developed narrative themes for the new galleries.
The museum offers visitors an insight into the complex and fascinating story of the athletes, champions, artists, architects, volunteers and many others who have played a part in the creation of the Olympic Games.
We welcome visitors with a dramatic reconstruction of the ancient Olympic Games with people milling around, and the Temple of Zeus at the centre. They are transported back in time and can witness what it was like to be there and compete.
Ancient sporting illustrations of chariot racing, discus and javelin on Olympian vases magically come to life and animate around the displays, and modern sports equipment are shown in action using spectacular TV coverage.
objects are owned by the International Olympic Committee
The story of the founder of the Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, takes place in his stylised study complete with his desk, wall paintings, window and bookcase. Precious personal objects are integrated into the set and interpreted in imaginative ways to tell visitors the story of how the idea of the Olympic Movement originated.
The Olympic flame and torches are cocooned in a sacred, sound-proofed space deserving of their importance to the Olympic story. An artistic slow-motion film shows the lighting of the flame in Athens and the significance of this as part of the Olympic ritual every four years.
How do you overcome the challenge of displaying hundreds of sports equipment and personal items from athletes; all made from different materials and requiring different needs? We opted for an open and modular display arrangement so that it is flexible to change and evolve.
Sport in its very nature is dynamic and fast paced, so we chose to display sporting collections and audio-visual together to bring inanimate sports equipment and objects to life.
The International Olympic Committee has
hours of video archive
‘Inside the Race’ is the pinnacle of the visit and captures the drama, emotion and tension of the greatest of all sporting occasions on a 19-metre wide, 180-degree circular screen. The film helps to set the collections that surround it in context of the goal set for all athletes – to become the best in the world.
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