Volkswagen's Autostadt

Topic: Technology

Museum: Volkswagen AG Focus: Science
People who worked on this: Bob Harness (high concept dev), John Apanites (design dev), jack Rouse (high concept dev)
My role: I was the Design Director for the Autolab and AutoMuseum portions of the project. My role was to work with the client and JRA creative staff to develop the interpretive program and entertainment components, as well as developing concept illustrations, schematic design, etc.

Description and goals

This was a series of exhibits developed to help guests understand what VW does to keep them safe, care for the environment, and build a quality product
Development process and challenges

We worked closely with VW engineers and designers to understand the issues and then develop creative solutions. These solutions manifest themselves as interactive exhibits, and experiences, art and live demonstrations. One of the challenges was getting the engineers to loosen-up and allow the exhibits to be fun as well as informative.
Lessons learned, mistakes we made (and what we did about them)

We probably could have pushed the client a bit more in terms of aesthetics.

This was a safety interactive- guests buckled into the sphere to experience the importance of safety restraints

This was technology exhibit featuring a cutaway Beetle that opened up to expose it's various systems