Metaphor (designers)

Metaphor is a London-based global design firm. Established in 2000 by Stephen Greenberg and Rachel Morris, Metaphor specializes in the re-presentation of museums, palaces, forts, landscapes, and country houses through master planning and design.

V & A
Metaphor's work in museums began with the master plan of the V & A in 2000.

Grand Egyptian Museum
Metaphor was the master planner and lead designer at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, Cairo, from 2003 and 2011. It is one of the largest planned archaeological museums in the world.

Ashmolean Museum
Metaphor redesigned 32 permanent galleries at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, opening in 2009.

The Museum of the Order of St John
In 2010, Metaphor planned, renovated, and displayed the Museum of the Order of St John in Clerkenwell. It tells the story of the Knights of the Order of St John, the Crusades, and their later history.

Holburne Museum
The Holburne Museum in Bath reopened in 2011, after a complete re-design. Metaphor displayed the central collection as if reflecting the mind of its eccentric 18th-century collector.

Olympic Museum
In 2013, Metaphor redesigned the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, a museum of the renewal of the Olympics by Pierre de Coubertin and the Olympic Legacy. It also designed and curated the Parc Olympique, including new routes, sight lines, welcome sequences, and lighting.

Current Projects
Metaphor is currently master-planning the National Museum of Scotland and the National Railway Museum. It's also master-planning and re-designing Shakespeare's Globe.

V & A
In 2007, Metaphor designed the Surreal Things exhibition at the V & A/ Stephen Bayley, writing for The Observer, called it "comprehensive, fascinating, engaging and instructive". [Rachel Campbell-Johnston], writing for The Times, said 'the psychological mood starts to possess you'.

The exhibition was redesigned to appear at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, running from 2007 to 2008. It was seen by 575,000 visitors, making it one of the most successful V & A touring exhibition ever.

British Museum
Metaphor first worked at the British Museum when it designed the exhibition on Michelangelo in 2005. At the time, it broke the museum's audience records, with 160,000 people seeing it.

The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Warriors at the British Museum in London. Metaphor used the curved walls of the Round Reading Room to hold projections, acting as a theatrical backdrop. Rachel Campbell-Johnston said that "exhibition designers and curators have to work hard to create a sense of spectacle. But they succeed brilliantly. The museum’s great Round Reading Room has been temporarily adapted into an atmospheric show space". The exhibition was seen by 850,000 people, 37% of whom had never been to the British Museum before.

Heritage
Metaphor has undertaken many projects in the wider cultural and heritage sector, including with National Trust properties, Historic Royal Palaces, and Wordsworth Trust. Clients have included Hampton Court Palace, Fountains Abbey, Wordsworth Trust, Hardwick Hall Country Park, Coughton Court, Winchester Cathedral, Winchester College, and Tyntesfield.

Lectures and writing
Metaphor's director, Stephen Greenberg, constantly lectures and teaches at universities around the country, including the University of Nottingham, the University of Leicester, and the University of Cambridge. He has also lectured at numerous museum conferences around the world.

Metaphor's director Rachel Morris has spoken at a number of conferences, such as the Museums Association Conference in Cardiff in 2014, entitled 'The Collection in the Cloud' on virtual museums and the concept of a museum space.

Metaphor curates a website called The Museum of Marco Polo, which seeks to explore 'What is a Museum?' and the changing relationship between the physical museum space and the virtual visitor. It includes the History of the Museum, and an explanation of how The Museum of Marco Polo came to be located on the island of Büyükada, near Istanbul. It is illustrated by the award-winning graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg.