Symbiotic spaces: Decolonizing identity in the spatial design of the museum of Macau

This chapter considers the narrative character in the Museum of Macau (MoM hereafter) and its potential to demonstrate how museums can use spatial configuration as a way of shaping knowledge and history. Dvora Yanow, Professor of Organizational Studies at Keele University in the UK, has studied museum buildings as narrative spaces. Her central thesis is that buildings - museums in particular - are both storytellers and part of the story being told; the museum is both a house of material culture and an artifact itself. It presents itself to be read and deciphered as an integral part of the narrative alongside the displays. Echoing Yanow’s position, this chapter employs the idea of symbiosis, pointing to the mutually beneficial coexistence of unlike organisms - a synergistic relationship that might result in the emergence of a new species.