A century on from opening, our great museums are getting back in tune with the public imagination. Emma Firmin meets the designers whose sense of fun is helping to make science sexy once again

Amid all the recent media coverage of high-profile museum exhibitions, one name that has stood out is that of Casson Mann. Headed by Dinah Casson and Roger Mann, the company already has an established reputation for imaginative office interiors. But it has been its exhibition designs for institutions such as the Science Museum and Natural History Museum that have raised its profile lately.

Dinah and Roger are devoid of the flashy, self- publicising streak that seems to be in many designers’ genetic make-up. Instead, their work is suffused with an intelligence that goes beyond gimmicks and popular trends. Both have backgrounds in furniture and interior design, with Dinah, who studied at Ravensbourne, spending several years working independently, and for companies such as Conran. The partnership was born in 1984, when Dinah asked Roger – studying interior design at Kingston at the time – to help her on a commission for the design of an ice-cream shop. This led to a series of projects for organisations such as the British Council and the Foreign Office.

Casson Mann is wary of becoming too well-known for one particular type of work, and exhibition design provided some welcome relief. The crossover is nothing new: Dinah cites heavy-weights such as Stanton Williams and Charles & Ray Eames as people whose work has impressed her.

Office projects offer designers a restricted audience, but exhibition design offers the chance to please more people, more of the time. Dinah feels that ‘Until recently, exhibition design had been very much in the hands of the graphics contingent, with an old-school mentality that resulted in a bombardment of information, rather than an exploration of digestible forms of communication.’ Casson Mann firmly believes that the purpose of its exhibition design is ‘to communicate ideas, by offering ways into the objects’. So you can forget squinting to read information that only a zoologist or brain surgeon could understand.

They also feel that for too long, visitors were viewed as ‘irritants’ by the museums; that at the end of the day, they cluttered up the space. Museums were treated with the same hushed reverence as libraries, and were definitely not places of entertainment. Having fun couldn’t possibly mean you were learning.

However, as public buildings, museums have an obligation to create environments that are accessible for all, and Casson Mann sees no conflict between expressing ideas in ‘a format which is comfortable for children and adults alike’. Visitor feedback from the Wellcome Wing has already proved instructive. Dinah readily admits that ‘Some visitors bring a greater depth and knowledge of the subjects than either ourselves or the museum.’ So patronise the visitor with extreme caution.

Although its three galleries for the Wellcome Wing have been hitting the headlines, Casson Mann had already worked for the Science Museum in the basement. The company had created the Mechanical Garden gallery for 3-6 year-olds – completed in 1995 and themed around environmental issues. Here, a wonderful sense of Alice in Wonderland is generated, where household objects are distorted and enlarged to give a playful, theatrical effect.

The museum had taken the idea to local schools to see exactly what it was this age group was after, and both Dinah and Roger were impressed by the innovative responses it provoked. It introduced a sense of interactivity even at the concept stage.It’s interactivity that has been the key to much of the success of Casson Mann’s exhibition work.

The galleries at the Wellcome Wing are informative and fun, but importantly, look cool. And for a place that relies on a stream of hard-to-impress teenagers, this is not an element that can be overlooked.

In Future is ‘a gallery about how science and technology will shape the future’, and deals with a series of contentious issues – like men having babies – using a series of 3m multi-media casino tables, where participants vote to decide whether the idea or issue should become part of the future. According to Roger, the concept here was democratic: that ‘we don’t have to accept the future that scientists give us’.

While tackling areas such as biomedicine and digital technology, since 1996 Casson Mann has also been working on the British Galleries, which are due to open at the V&A at the end of next year. The project includes 15 galleries and 2000 objects that cover British art and design from 1500-1900, from Henry VIII to Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Ironically, with science centres and other museums in danger of becoming the new rock ‘n’ roll, Casson Mann has found itself fighting against being pigeonholed as an exhibition designer. To prove the point it has recently completed the chambers for law firm Matrix, home to one Cherie Booth QC – which couldn’t be further from recreating the Gobi Desert for dinosaurs