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Sony Wonder Technology Lab
At Sony Wonder Technology Lab, visitors use Signal Stations to create profiles and send messages to other users or broadcast them on huge transparent projection screens.
An artifact-based diorama on the history of communication technology is located along the museum's ramp, slowing visitors down as they descend through the space. When visitors tap their ID cards, their images appear on a grainy black-and-white
TV set in the diorama, as well as on newer versions of televisions.
A multimedia presentation on nanotechnology teaches visitors about the concept of a billionth, then allows them to explore current and future applications of the technology in various industries.
Using haptic technology often used by surgeons, guests can actually feel what it's like to perform open-heart surgery.
In an area where traffic tends to slow while visitors are waiting for the next experience, an interactive floor installation by media artist Scott Snibbe encourages social interaction by generating colored circles in response to visitors' movements.
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The second-generation Sony Wonder Technology Lab
negotiates a new deal between technology, architecture, and experience.
In many ways, the newly renovated Sony Wonder
Technology Lab—Sony Corporation of America’s
interactive, free-to-the-public museum in midtown Manhattan—reflects the evolution of our love affair with
technology.
When the museum first opened in 1994, the age of
computing was still relatively new and we were fascinated with “high tech”: the workings and physicality of it, the
hardware and cables and shiny metal boxes.
Fast-forward 16 years and the world is a different place.
We take technology for granted and we don’t want to see the cables and boxes. We demand transparency,
adaptability, portability, and immediate response.
“So the design language needed to change dramatically,”
says Lee Skolnick, principal of Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership (New York). In 2001,
Sony asked the firm to revamp the museum’s second level, which was completed in 2003. In 2005, Skolnick was asked
back to lead the redesign of the rest of the four-level space.
“Instead of focusing on technology for technology’s sake,
we wanted the museum to be about technology as an enabler,” says Lisa Davis, senior director of
communications and public affairs at Sony Corporation of
America. Sony wanted the museum to embody the “3 Cs,”
emphasizing how technology helps us create, connect, and
communicate.
It also needed to showcase some of the world’s most advanced technologies—some of it not yet commercially
available. And it needed to withstand the enthusiasm of
more than 200,000 annual visitors, many of them schoolchildren.
Metaphorical world
Skolnick’s challenge was to create an environment that seamlessly merges interaction and connectivity. “What that
means to me as a designer is that the communication, the architecture, and the media are all as one, and whenever
possible, visitors are interacting with the environment
itself, not just a station.”
His Big Idea—the one he literally came up with on an airplane—was that if we all interact with technology and
communications in the real world, why not create a
metaphorical world that is self-contained, completely immersive, and actually formed from the communications
created by visitors?
From that, Skolnick’s architectural vision emerged: a
glossy white envelope on which every surface is alive with projections or embedded with media. A sleeve formed by
curved white floor-to-ceiling panels is peeled back in places to accommodate windows, doors, screens, and
infrastructural requirements. Mesh acoustical ceiling tiles
and glass also punctuate the space. Against this backdrop, visitors interact with technology using hardware encased in
sinuous white powdercoated-metal forms—the antithesis of
traditional “kiosks.”
On arrival, visitors log in and create personal profiles, which are recorded on RFID cards they use throughout the
space. As they collect experiences during their visit, bits
and pieces of their profile data are manipulated, shared, tweaked, and broadcast in the space itself.
“We want people to understand that from the moment they
enter, they are in a special world that operates according to
its own rules, like entering a huge 4D game,” explains Skolnick. “As you move through it, you create a storyline
that moves with you.”
Getting the tech right
With technology as both a central content theme as well as
the primary delivery system, getting it right was crucial. Technology consultants were embedded in the project from
the onset, a contrast to the more typical model where
designers design, then find someone to translate the concept to reality.
“Now, in a time when technology is a means for us to
understand and mediate a complex world, designers and
technology experts have to work together much earlier in the process,” says Eli Kuslansky, co-founder and managing
partner of Unified Field (New York), which partnered with Skolnick on design and development of media, software,
and interfaces. Three Byte Intermedia handled the systems
integration and updated the museum’s back-end infrastructure. “Projects like this one are about creating
instant communication and constant dialogue, and that has
to be done in a transparent way,” adds Kuslansky.
Skolnick agrees. “We needed their expertise to know what was possible. We needed them sitting at the table as we
fleshed out the content, providing input on how it would be
delivered and interacted with. We especially knew there would be big expectations around the interfaces, so we
called on their expertise for going beyond touchscreens and push buttons.”
When it came to selecting the technologies to be showcased in the museum, Sony had strong ideas and a vast treasure
trove of resources. Members of the design team traveled all over the country to understand Sony’s products, and
worked with eight different Sony divisions on content and
technology. They also sought out a wide range of content and technology experts.
Ultimately, the museum employs several technologies that
have never existed outside the R&D laboratory. Visitors
use haptic (touch) technology to perform virtual open heart surgery, generate digital profiles with integrated–circuit
smart cards using RFID technology, create computer animations using real-time 3D visualization, program
robots, and work in a state-of-the-art high-definition TV
studio.
Ramping it down
For all its virtual magic, the museum does exist in physical
space. And the four-story, 14,000-sq.-ft. floor plan was not without its challenges.
Visitors enter the museum on the ground floor, then take
glass elevators to the fourth floor, where they log in and work their way through the space down a series of
Guggenheim-like, ADA-accessible ramps.
“What we’ve learned from experience is that when people
are on ramps—particularly kids—the motivation is to get down them as soon as possible,” says Skolnick.
So part of the design team’s challenge was to slow them
down. They did that by adding things to see and do along
the way, and by expanding some already-existing platforms so visitors could detour and interact with new stations and
activities. The “Anytime, Anywhere” exhibit is an artifact-based timeline that chronicles the history of
communications technology, from early telephones and
televisions to the latest high-tech gadgets. Even this diorama-like exhibit is interactive: when guests tap their ID
cards on special card readers, their images are broadcast on a grainy old black-and-white TV set, an HD TV, and a new
OLED TV to emphasize improvements in picture quality.
“Signal Stations” along the ramp, along with all of the
museum’s other interactive exhibits, are activated by the same tap of an ID card. They recognize the guest’s profile,
greet the guest personally, and guide him or her through
various activities to manipulate profile data, then broadcast it to other stations or to huge transparent projection screens
for all to see.
Into the light
Beyond the demands of user interfaces, transparency, and
seamlessness, Skolnick says his personal goal was to create the antithesis of the typical dark, “cave-like” science and
technology museum.
“Today, because of the strength, clarity, and brightness of
screen technology, we don’t need to be in the dark anymore. I wanted to create a place that was bright and
cheerful, not spooky or ominous.”
Karen Kelso, the Wonder Lab’s executive director, says the
redesigned museum succeeds, too, in bringing technology to light. “We set out to demystify technology,” she
explains. “In the past, it was appreciated from afar. We wanted to invite children to experience technology in a
hands-on setting, to spark their creativity and show them
that, using their imaginations and technology, they can create virtually anything.”
--By Pat Matson Knapp, segdDESIGN No. 26, 2009
SONY WONDER TECHNOLOGY LAB
Location: New York
Client: Sony Corporation of America
Architecture, Exhibition Design, and Graphics: Lee H.
Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership
Design Team: Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA, Paul Alter, Jo Ann
Secor (principals); Peter Hyde, (senior exhibit
designer/project manager); Alethea Cheng (senior
associate/project manager); Miguel Cardenas (senior design associate); Maja Gilberg (senior interpretive manager);
James Hollingsworth (senior exhibit designer); Richard Bressani, Linda Feinberg (exhibit designers); Christina
Lyons (senior graphic designer); Daphne Smith (graphic
designer)
Construction Management: Big Show Construction Management
Consultants: Unified Field (design and development of media, software, and interfaces), Three Byte Intermedia
(A/V systems integration, back-end infrastructure), Scharff-Weisberg (A/V consulting), Available Light (lighting
design)
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