In between, the future simply turns blue: Anyone who changes from one room of the new branch of the Deutsches Museum in Nuremberg to the next will receive passages made of exposed concrete and blue light.

Then you enter the next cabinet of curiosities full of prototypes, showcases and experiment stations.

The building, known as the “Museum of the Future”, which opened this September after a seven-year concept and construction phase, offers a total of five such areas: Body, Work & Everyday Life;

System earth;

System city as well as space & time.

The future can be dreamed of, it can arouse fears and it is hotly debated.

But how do you bring such a dynamic topic into the museum and exhibit it?

The view of the relationship between technology, science and society over the next ten to 20 years will ultimately change continuously: Today's future is often the past tomorrow.

The new museum is responding to this with two approaches.

On the one hand, it wants to keep moving: up to a quarter of the 250 exhibits are to be changed or completely replaced every year.

On the other hand, the exhibition develops along overriding questions on the ethics of technology and science.

This reduces the dependence on the technological up-to-dateness of individual exhibits.

Visitors are allowed to experiment for themselves

The branch of the world's largest museum of science and technology cannot and does not want to deny its origins: like the headquarters in Munich that opened on Isar Island in 1925, the future museum relies heavily on interaction and experimentation stations. “We actually carried the principle of the museum's founder, Oskar von Miller, into the 21st century,” says Andreas Gundelwein. The geoscientist is Head of Exhibition and Collection at the Deutsches Museum. He developed the concept of the future museum and implemented the project from 2014 until it opened.

Trying out to understand: The museum already follows this idea on the ground floor.

Because here - in addition to the five exhibition areas on the three upper floors - there are two laboratories.

Programs are offered here, especially for groups of schoolchildren, whose experiments deal with the themes of the exhibition.

The Nuremberg group of “future pilots” will also have their home here in the future.

This is the name of the youth club of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), which is committed to the extracurricular promotion of engineering and natural sciences.

In general, the Future Museum relies on intensive exchange, including with the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe (ISI) and various universities.

What can the city of the future look like?

While walking through the exhibition, the visitor is first welcomed by the forum, the rows of which are aligned with a kinetic sculpture with nine large, constantly moving LED monitors. This installation is one of the large exhibits that were brought into the museum during the construction period. This also includes the 15-meter-high downpipe, in which experiments can be carried out close to zero gravity: the test table with the experimental set-up and camera falls through all floors in the transparent pipe at breakneck speed until the eddy current brake brakes it. The effect of the case on the experiment can then be viewed on the monitor. This system is unique in a museum, says exhibition organizer Gundelwein.

The Future Museum does not necessarily ask the big questions with the largest exhibits, but also with fine details or virtual content.

For example, how do we want to live in the cities of the future?

Anyone who equips such a metropolis in digital simulation with fascinating systems such as an underground hyperloop as a transport system must not forget the need for energy generation: Without a power plant or other source of power supply, the vision of beautiful new mobility will not be possible.