GOLD: Green Community Interactives

The National Building Museum's Green Community exhibit showcases communities with innovative sustainability efforts. Along these lines, Potion's interactive pieces provoke visitors to consider sustainability on a personal, global, and community level. The Transportation Hallway features three"traffic lanes"—bicycle, car or bus—projected onto the floor. As visitors traverse a lane, the vehicle moves with them and popups describe that vehicle's benefits and consequences. Visitors entering the exhibit first encounter the Think Global interactive wall, featuring a slowly spinning globe. Touching an icon beneath the globe triggers a network, like shipping lanes or undersea cables, to appear. Two networks can be displayed together, highlighting the overlap of these global pathways. Finally, the Act Local interactive wall lies at the exhibit's end. The projected community contains familiar sites - power plant, landfill, industrial district. Touching a site brings up potential improvements, like transforming the power plant into a wind farm or adding recycling stations to the landfill. Visitors can work together to "green" the town. Between the simple interaction of the hallway, the subtle layering of the Think Global wall, and the game-like feedback of the Act Local wall, the interactives offer an engaging experience to children, teen and adult visitors.

 

For this project, Potion produced the interaction design. Matter served as the exhibit design firm, and management provided art direction.

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