Radios in Canada

The Space

The Carleton Art Gallery is a two-level exhibition space on the Carleton University campus — and the space we were designing for. The main gallery is a long, open floor with high ceilings and a mezzanine running above one side. The mezzanine gallery is a narrower upper level that overlooks the main floor below, with a separate balcony area at one end. Together, the two floors gave us distinct zones to work with — the main gallery for the exhibition's primary timeline experience, and the mezzanine for the period rooms and final interactives.

Floorplan — Level 1

Floorplan — Level 2

High Gallery

Main Gallery

Mezzanine Gallery

The Source Material

The project brief asked us to choose a community story from Digital Museums Canada — a federal program that funds digital exhibitions drawn from collections across the country. The digital exhibition we selected was Radio at Home in Canada, which gave us both the artifacts and the historical framing that our physical exhibition was built around.

Chosen Artifacts

Radios

Radio Galène Loose Coupler, c. 1920

Everyman Radiophone, c. 1921

Magnavox Loudspeaker, 1922

DeForest-Corsley Elgin, 1931

Cathedral Radio, c. 1932

Sparton 051, c. 1932

Tabletop Radio, c. 1930s

RCA Victor Globetrotter P6-1, 1935

Marconi Model 85, c. 1936

Crosley D-25, 1940

SRE Type 457, 1942

Signal Corps Military Radio, 1944

Clock Radio, c. 1950

Ducretet-Thompson Car Radio, 1951

Shelbern 55, 1955

Zenith Royal 500, 1956

Marconi CMC 488, 1957

Emerson 555V, 1959

Sony TR-84, 1959

GE P807J, 1961

Print & Advertising

Loudspeaker Catalogue, 1920s

Warning to Users of Radio, c. 1930

Allied's Radio Builder's Handbook, 1941

RCA Victor Advertisement, 1941

Publicity Digest — Radio for Victory, WWII

Radiophilie Québec — RCA Victor M-45

The Big Idea

Radio didn't just bring sound into Canadian homes — it connected rural and urban Canadians, provided a lifeline during wartime, and became a centrepiece of everyday domestic life. The exhibition tells this story through four colour-coded eras, each with its own atmosphere and interactive centrepiece.

Storytelling Through Four Eras

Visitors

Primary

The Explorer

Curious visitors with little prior knowledge who want an immersive, hands-on experience. They are drawn to interactives, willing to try a challenge, and leave wanting to know more.

Secondary

The Facilitator

Parents and caregivers bringing children. They value interactives that are accessible and fun for multiple ages — and may be reminded of a radio culture they themselves grew up with.

Three distinct directions were developed and presented for critique — each interpreting the Radios in Canada material through a different visual lens. They vary in tone, typographic character, and spatial atmosphere, while all working within the same two-level gallery footprint.

Spatial Overview

The main gallery on the ground floor holds four colour-coded era zones, each with an interactive centrepiece and a spline timeline winding through the space. The mezzanine above holds four period living rooms — one per era — plus a final recording-booth interactive and a high-gallery viewing area looking down onto the main floor.

Main gallery — colour-coded zones, spline timeline, and interactive stations

Level Two — Period Rooms

Upstairs, each era has its own living room furnished with period-appropriate furniture, wallpaper, and a radio from the collection — giving visitors a sense of what it actually felt like to have a radio in the home during that decade.

Level Two walkthrough — period rooms overview

Red era period room rendering

Floor Plans

Level 1 — floor plan and overall render

Level 2 — floor plan and rendering

Physical Model

A scale model of the full two-level exhibition was built to explore the spatial relationships between the era zones, period rooms, and circulation paths.

Both floors of the finished model, viewed from above

Both levels stacked — main floor below, mezzanine above

The Making

Model mid-assembly in the studio

3D-printed and hand-painted car prop for the Radios on the Move era

Main Floor Furniture

Period Room Furnishings

Each mezzanine room is furnished to its era — from the wood-and-leather chairs of the 1920s Crystal Era living room to the green mid-century sofa and a parked Cadillac in the 1959–1961 room, evoking car radio culture.

Furnishing moodboards — 1920–1930, 1939–1945, 1950–1960, 1959–1961

Five Stations

Each era has an interactive designed to draw visitors into the content rather than just present it — building from hands-on tinkering to full-body immersion.

High Gallery

Giant Interactive Radios

Three oversized radios with functional turning dials sit in front of a large topographic map of Canada. Each dial switches the broadcast playing and illuminates the location where it was originally aired — making the exhibition's central idea tangible: radio as a connector of people across a vast country.

Final Interactive

Radio Recording Booth

A full-scale replica recording booth closes the exhibition. Visitors step inside to operate studio equipment, while a listening area just outside lets others hear what's happening in the booth — putting the connection theme of the whole exhibition into direct, live experience.

The Crystal Era — 1920–1930

Build a Crystal Radio

A circuit-building puzzle where visitors assemble a working crystal radio — mirroring the tinkering culture that gave early Canadian radio its start.

Radios During the War — 1939–1945

Broadcast Listening Stations

Real 1940s broadcasts — including Marcel Ouimet en Londres (1943) and the Liberation de Paris (1944) — paired with archival slideshow visuals, heard through headphones at freestanding pedestals.

Radios Post-War — 1950–1960

The Diefenbunker Studio

A video installation documenting the intricate radio studio inside Canada's Cold War bunker — giving visitors a close-up look at broadcasting infrastructure they would never otherwise see.

Radios on the Move — 1959–1961

Beach Photo Booth

Visitors pose with portable radios against a golden sandy backdrop, transporting them to the late-1950s beach culture that made transistor radios ubiquitous.

Colour Palette

Gallery Posters

Each era's mezzanine room is anchored by a tall poster panel — set in Futura, using the era's colour — that names the radio on display, gives its year, and explains its place in Canadian domestic history. The same four colours thread through flooring, furniture, and wall panels on both levels.

Style Guide