Through the Roof

The house at Coughton Court dates from the Tudor period and 2024 saw the start of a major restoration project of the entire roof. Although this required major disruption, the house was to remain open throughout, enabling visitors to witness conservation and restoration in action. This would require some nifty visual and interactive storytelling and that’s where we Penguins came in, after winning a competitive tender process.

Inside the house, the Dining Room and Saloon had been transformed into an art store to hold the collection of portraits and other items that had to be taken down during the building project. We worked closely with an arts fabricator to design and build panelled walls with large acrylic windows to allow visitors to see into the store, but also left room to interpretation (including a recreation of some hidden ceiling detail and a full-sized detailed outline of the dining table stored below). Bold graphics in brand colours were used to encourage visitors to slow down, take a closer look, learn about the people in the portraits and add vibrancy to the space. Interactives were also key here – we created a ‘dress up and pose’ and a magnetic build a portrait activity that visitors of all ages loved.

Outside the main house, we created an interactive exhibition space in the empty stables. We designed and built a display unit that mimicked the shape of the Court, with cubbies to hold finds that were discovered during the restoration. As things had not yet been found, multiple spaces of different sizes were created to keep it flexible. This was painted a vibrant yellow, grey and black to match the portrait store.

A ‘bat cave’ was created that featured an accessible entrance and crawl hole for younger visitors. We installed motion sensor speakers to play bat sounds and made a sniff box that contained the ‘sweet’ smell of a bat roost. We devised several interactives for this space – making origami bats, a lift a flap fact checker and an echo-location activity. A final bat feature was ‘Roofus’ showing the wingspan of the world’s largest bat with different textures replicate the feel of bat wings.

Lastly, we made a reproduction of a rare painted textile that was removed ‘Through the Roof’  for conservation. This was accompanied with handheld boards which highlighted the different people featured in the original. Here we used a slightly different colour palette of orange and grey that better suited the reproduced artwork. 

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