30 January 2012

Legacy Way Visitors' Centre

The Legacy Way Visitors' Centre combines multimedia and exhibition design for an interactive, immersive experience.

Film and video production company Graetzmedia aren't afraid to try their hand at new things, recently completing an immersive environment for the Legacy Way Visitors' Centre in Toowong, Queensland.

The brief called for a space that would effectively communicate the vision and construction process of Brisbane City Council's Legacy Way, a 4.6 kilometre tunnel that will connect the Western Freeway at Brisbane's Toowong to the Inner City Bypass at Kelvin Grove.

Graetzmedia used their experience in audiovisual technology to create a visitors' centre that blends educational exhibition and experiential marketing to create an exciting form of community engagement that is all about the "end experience for the user," explains Daniel Graetz of Graetzmedia.

"We're used to creating content that has to achieve a certain feeling when you get to the end of it, and we approached [the visitors' centre] the same way."

4 distinct zones make up the experience - an entry foyer; a high definition meeting room, interactive tunnel experience and 2 zones representing the Western and Eastern tunnel portals.

Throughout the walk-through exhibit, visitors are greeted with custom multi-media packages and featurettes exploring the different elements of the Legacy Way project, all set within a custom-designed space.

The tunnel features screens mounted in the floor which simulate the different road layers that go into the floor of a tunnel, from bare rock to the finished surface.

The tunnel also lets visitors experience how a tunnel boring machine (TBM) works, with touchscreens displaying multimedia elements and high quality 3D models of the machinery.

"The touchscreen side of things is completely bespoke," Graetz says. "We tried a few off-the-shelf multi-touch software packages and found that none of them had the right response or reliability... so our team basically started from scratch and reverse engineered the drivers that run the touch hardware."

The visitors' centre needed to appeal to and inform stakeholders, engineers - and even schoolchildren on excursions. A 'push the red button' exhibit is a fun added element "for the kids", says Graetz - on pushing a button the floor vibrates, and sound and animations simulate the drilling of a TBM.

"There is a real design sensibility to the centre to make it a place that would attract people and give them an enjoyable experience and chance to really engage with the project," Graetz explains.

Photography: Jen Dainer

Graetzmedia
graetzmedia.com