The wall becomes a window.

A video wall transforms into an interactive glass case, revealing layers of augmented reality.

The surface is a gorgeous opaque touchscreen video display until you touch it. Then it becomes an interactive display case. At the Alameda Creek Watershed Visitors Center in Sunol, California, a display wall built into the visitor center’s interior does exactly that. A wide-screen video plays across the custom widescreen glass, then fades to reveal a lit, physical topographic model behind it. The model is designed and lit to become a dynamic 3D map of the surrounding watershed and lands. SkyBox reveals a deeper story than video or display cases alone.

A custom transparent display case that disappears into the wall.

The brief was a hard one: explain a vast, mostly inaccessible protected watershed using aerial video, interactive panoramas, animated data, and long-form text. There was no stock display case that could do this. We used laser scans of the local geology to fabricate a 3D topographic model of the region. Custom interactive lighting coordinates with a transparent OLED panel so digital overlays align with the model behind them. We also took hours of 360 drone footage of the region so that visitors can fly out over protected lands the public cannot otherwise enter. Exhibitry’s designers engineered the model, the lighting, and the glass with the Alameda Creek team to create a single cohesive experience sized specifically for the visitor center.

Designed to create a seamless experience.

Sightlines are set for a room that gets school groups and solo hikers on the same afternoon, and the interface is designed accessibly so visitors of different heights and abilities can read the screen and use it without help. From across the room the unit reads as an unbroken part of the visitor center’s interior wall, not a screen propped in front of it. Interior lighting behind the glass is calibrated for the room’s lighting plan, so the physical model looks great when the glass is showing video or revealing the terrain beneath. Content updates remotely, so new trail data or seasonal changes reach the wall without anyone opening the case.

The best surface in the room isn’t a screen. It’s a window you didn’t know was there.

Exhibitry — on designing for the built environment

The same design philosophy can be found in the space-capsule displays we created for Kennedy Space Center, where edge-lit acrylic walls hold transparent touchscreens surrounding real spacecraft, and into a carbon-management exhibit we built for a major oil and gas company in Houston.

A screen set in front of a room is furniture. A screen built into the room’s own wall is architecture.

Frequently asked.