Museum of Querencia
An immersive environment that helps people reconnect with their authentic selves in a future where living with multiple personas is a necessity
Experience Design
Storytelling
Branding
Design Fiction
DETAILS
Graphic Design and Expressions @ Umeå Institute of Design
TEAM
Just me!
MY ROLE
Research, Concept, Ideation, Design
TIMELINE
2 weeks - 2025
The World in 2050
By 2050, identity has become society's most valuable currency. Automation has displaced traditional labour, and people now participate in the world primarily through self expression by belonging to multiple micro communities, each demanding a different version of themselves.
Agile, multi-persona living is no longer a choice but a requirement. But this constant performance comes at a cost. The pressure to stay relevant across personas has quietly eroded the sense of an inner, authentic self. People find themselves unsure about which version of “me” is real.
Timeline
2027
AI companionship wearables become common
2032
Societies begin decentralising data monopolies
2037
Automation displaces majority of work
2043
AI companions present the
"real you"
2050
The line between self and system disappears
2050
A new form of social welfare emerges
The Museum of Querencia
Born out of small collectives of psychologists, designers, and social welfare advocates, the Museum of Querencia is a new form of public infrastructure designed for the restoration and realisation of self. The infrastructure mimics accessible immersive environments that support reflection and recalibration. It is intended to remind people that identity is not something to be optimised but to be felt, understood, and lived.
Branding
The word Querencia stands for refuge for the soul in Spanish. It represents an inner sanctuary where one draws their strength from and finds comfort amidst life's challenges.
Brand Vision
To nurture a world where individuals live in harmony with their most authentic selves
Moodboard
The visual world of Querencia is fluid, luminous and full of mystery. There is a soft interplay of light, texture, and colour that mirrors the vibrant inner landscape of the self.
Experience
The experience follows Aira, visiting the Museum after an intense workday of wearing too many masks. She enters an outdoor pod, unassuming like a bus stop.
Inside, she is gently guided through a process of recollection where sensory and emotional prompts help surface a memory in which
she felt most like herself.
The Querencia Patch
The Querencia Patch is the museum's physical artefact intended to extend the restorative experience beyond the museum walls. It carries three functions, each chosen for their role in memory and emotional grounding:
Stress Signal Sensor
Detects physiological stress responses and activates the patch's restorative functions
Smell Dispenser
Releases a scent associated with the memory recreated in the museum to have a direct sensory trigger for the experience and memory
Sound Dispenser
Plays a personalised audio fragment from the museum experience, returning the wearer to a moment of felt authenticity in a moment of stress
Reflection
The course offered a rapid and fun exploration into speculative design methods and channeled the use of my creativity and skills in visual design and branding.
It stretched my visual design and prototyping skills in new directions, and gave me space to experiment in ways that more research heavy projects don't always allow. We also exhibited this project at UID for 2 weeks.
What stayed with me was the underlying question the project kept returning to: what does it mean to feel like yourself? Designing a fictional institution built entirely around that question made it feel surprisingly urgent and more like something already underway.
