A3: Matyáš Cigler – National Museum of Mongolia

Task — Design a museum/info center in Ulaanbaatar dedicated to the life of Mongolian nomads. The museum should include an exhibition dedicated to their history, present, and future.
This task stemmed from a semester project that I worked on together with Vojtěch Fejlek and an intern from Japan, Tomoko Kato. We addressed the current issues faced by Mongolian nomads and their solutions in our work.

Concept — I have never visited Ulaanbaatar, but I tried to gain the best possible understanding of the city. I found out that there is already a museum of this type that exists and is very successful, so I decided to design an extension of the existing museum with additional exhibitions focusing on the present and future of Mongolian nomads.
An important question for me was what such a museum should provide to the visitor. It should certainly be as immersive as possible in drawing visitors into the problem itself. I approached the exhibition dedicated to the present more as a gateway to the surrounding Ulaanbaatar and Mongolia. It consists of a hall where visitors meet a Mongolian nomad who offers the foreigner a horseback trip around the museum or even to the Mongolian steppes. This hall is dominated by a giant map of Mongolia providing information about various locations, their attractions, and challenges. The visitor can thus choose a place they wish to visit and also a guide with a horse to take them to the location (Even during my semester project, I learned that many unemployed ex-nomads live on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar who would be very suitable for this job.)
The exhibition dedicated to the future of Mongolian nomadism occupies the entire third floor, where there is exhibition space for temporary displays and workshops for various activities; visitors can try to build a traditional yurt themselves or create their own yurt from various modern materials. In addition, there is a café, a library, and a lecture hall with a cinema.
The last part is the roof, where we find 4000 m2 of typical Mongolian steppe. Here, visitors can try building a yurt in real weather conditions (-40/+40° C) or prepare traditional goat cheese.
The museum would thus serve as a new Mongolian cultural center where foreigners could meet nomads. And a visitor who lacks the time to travel around Mongolia would experience the country firsthand here.