A horizontal gallery of the Magnezitovaya mine, created over forty years ago is an object of industrial legacy, which was decommissioned and is not part of the company's business anymore. The gallery is still connected to other spaces of the mine and is used in part as an additional ventilation channel for its main hole. Besides, the gallery could be used as an escape route in case of an emergency. This puts the museum exhibition that is being created in the gallery into a framework. 

The air doors separating gallery spaces from each other are normally closed. When visitors come to the museum, the doors can be opened wide to provide access to the next room. As an alternative, the surfaces of the air doors could be used as projection screens to display content-rich segments of the exhibition.

For the visitors’ convenience, the gallery will have a self-leveling floor made of concrete with 00-02 size magnesium chips. Railway platforms with narrow-gage tracks, which were written off at the mine and upgraded to museum exhibition modules are being brought into the museum space using a narrow-gage railway built into the floor of the gallery. In parallel with the rails installation work, concealed wiring is being installed in the floor for the power supply network and low-current switching networks for multimedia equipment of the exhibition.

The configuration of the adit dictates the “gallery-based” system of museum representation: this is a consistent narrative that the visitors discover as they enter the museum from the surface and move deeper into the rock, exploring the museum space. There is a number of forks, offshoots and niches on the path, with separate exhibitions dedicated to individual stories associated with the history of the mine or displaying individual minerals from the museum's collection. 

To view the project presentation, use the link.