Since 2019, the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte in Regensburg has been the central knowledge repository for the (recent) history of Bavaria. It focuses on the people in Bavaria, the locals and also the newcomers, who have found their home here.
The Bavarian exhibition »Wirtshaussterben? Wirtshausleben!« is dedicated to the Bavarian tavern culture and the challenges it faces: since the late 1960s, the classic taverns in Bavaria have become fewer and fewer, village communities are losing their centre. Recently – even before Corona – this has gotten dramatically worse. Keywords are bureaucracy, staff shortages or changed leisure-time behaviour. Then, the pandemic also brought hardship to established innkeepers. The Bavaria exhibition explores the development from the Roman tavern to the cozy inn and the pompous »beer palace«. Bavarian breweries made the tavern culture internationally famous around 1900 at the world exhibitions.
We were given the beautiful task of being responsible for the exhibition graphics and the media stations. The installation created by exhibition designer Friedrich Pürstinger, which metaphorically stands for the »explosion« of the taverns, forms the central element of the exhibition, with 400 objects from the dining room and kitchen together with light effects and a floor projection. Typographically, we decided on an Antiqua family that has extremely sharp edges and fine hairlines in combination with a static sans-serif font. Both fonts are integrated into the design of the eight exhibition areas and are shown to their fullest advantage in the wall modules, projections and hands-on stations. Cheers and enjoy your meal!
