“Battlefield: Mariupol” Museum

About the project

The task

The exhibition concept has nine zones — from “Nostalgia” for Soviet Mariupol to the Hall of Memory. Several of them include multimedia: video stories in the entrance zone, a chronology and an interactive map in the hall on the 2022 liberation, projectors, lighting and sound in “The veteran’s flat”, interactive panels and video in the “Future of Mariupol” zone.

What we did

Museum navigation

An application for a vertical touch screen: a floor plan and a list of halls — the entrance zone, “Occupation of Mariupol 1941–1943, 2014–2022”, “The veteran’s flat”, “Liberation of Mariupol 1943”, “Liberation of Mariupol 2022”, “Reconstruction of Mariupol”, “Hall of Fame of Heroes of the Special Military Operation and the Great Patriotic War”, “Hall of Memory” and the temporary exhibition. Each hall has an image, a description and an “Interactive” tab on what visitors can do there.

“Occupation of Mariupol”

A vertical touch panel in two columns — “1941” and “2014”. On the left are documents from the German occupation: the report on atrocities of 15 September 1943, a 1942 letter to the editors of Pravda, documents on crimes against civilians and prisoners of war. On the right are residents’ testimonies and surveys about 2014–2022. A document opens full screen and can be paged through.

“Liberation of Mariupol 2022”

A horizontal touch screen with a timeline of events from 24 February to 20 May 2022 — six periods, from “The offensive and the first ring” to “Evacuation and the end of the defence”. The timeline scrolls with a swipe, and photographs open large.

“Heroes of the liberation”

A touch screen featuring ten heroes of the 2022 battles for Mariupol — among them Vadim Gromov, Vladislav Golovin, Eduard Dyakonov, Aleksey Berngard and Andrey Kunakov. The visitor chooses a hero and sees a photo, his rank and an account of his heroic deed.

Hall of Fame of Heroes

Two vertical screens, “Heroes of Russia” and “Heroes of the USSR”: each cycles through nine portraits with names.

“The veteran’s flat”

A projection in the window of a destroyed flat: behind the broken glass a house is burning, rain is falling and the sounds of battle can be heard. The video plays on a loop.

“Communications hub”

Fourteen short recordings of radio communications from 2022 — from “Central, it’s two of ours” to “I see six enemy tanks”.

Videos for screens

Entrance zone — a two-minute film about Soviet Mariupol (Zhdanov) made from archive newsreels. 2022 hall — a nine-minute film made from fragments of the film “At the Edge of the Abyss” (Maksim Fadeyev, Sergey Belous, 2024), with the authors credited. “Reconstruction” — the film “Mariupol of the future”: the city “now” and “in the future”, with plans for housing and the bus network. The entrance film and the 2022 film were made in two versions — for horizontal and vertical screens.

How it is built

The applications run on vertical (1080×1920) and horizontal (1920×1080) touch screens; they are controlled by touch and by swiping left and right.

The vertical version of the 2022 film and the projection in the flat are in 2160×3840 resolution. For the vertical screens in the Hall of Fame of Heroes and for the projection in the window, the image was prepared already rotated.

Two visual styles: blue for 2022 and navigation, red and black for the occupation and the heroes; archive documents and photographs sit in “paper” frames.

Result