Designing of Wayfinding as facilitator of evacuation in case of emergency: application to large museums

In case of emergency, a poor building layout or inappropriate signage system in relation to theenvironment or to the knowledge by people can hinder the orienting ability. These aspects becomecrucial for a conscious design/retrofit for complex buildings as large museums, because they could beor become hardly usable by people, especially in overcrowding situations.Thoughts prior to design of works for safety in large museums must also take into account of theindividual abilities in identifying the exit routes to safe place/rooms and that even occasional visitorsshall easily find them usable.In such a context with a large presence of visitors in relation to particular cultural events, we also needto assess lack of alternative measures (design/construction, systems or management) besides thesignage system, actually only based on visual signs. In fact, this is usually the only available guidancetool, and it is only part of the overall safety system, without providing signage modes using moresensorial abilities.Therefore, this paper pays attention to identifying guidelines - for actions aiming to safety and tofacilitation of evacuation in case of emergency in large museums – included in the following specificareas: visual access to information, design/construction perception level, directional signage system,floorplans layout.