Empire State Building Observatory Galleries

Practice Area

Client

Empire State Realty Trust

  1. The Construction Area was inspired by the photography of Lewis Hine. The historically accurate life-sized video piece surrounds visitors on four walls and the ceiling.

  2. This large-scale seventy-two screen experience pays homage to the Empire State Building’s celebrity status. It is accompanied by an original orchestral score.

  3. Most Advanced touchscreens showcase pillars of the building’s sustainability. Visitors can send particles flying away and interact to learn more about energy saving.

  4. Visitors can peer into recreated survey transits and see 1920s street action come to life alongside generative audioscapes, using original sounds from New York.

  5. Scenes of NY celebrates the diversity of the city with optical viewfinders, each has a screen inside featuring stereoscopic 360º video paired with ambisonic sound

  6. Squint/Opera designed digital wayfinding for the whole of the lobby area including these playful illustrations explaining the security check-in procedure.

  7. The ‘Newspaper Boy’ film is a recreated street scene which follows a newspaper boy announcing the opening of the building.

  8. New York’s most famous gorilla clings to the side of the building. The ape was created in 3D with specialist character animators and VFX artists.

Project Vision

A re-envisioning of the Empire State Building’s visitor experience has resulted in a fully immersive experience that excites, educates and entertains visitors from its entrance to its iconic observation deck. Spanning over 35,000 square feet, the result is a multi-sensory journey through one of the world’s most famous buildings.

As the most popular attraction in New York, with over 4 million people traveling through the building each year, the aim was to bring the experience of visiting this 20th-century icon into the 21st century. Large-scale, immersive experiences took precedence over text-heavy didactics. Yet, all stories told through the media had to be easily understood by the millions of non-English speakers who come each year. All content had to be human-translated into nine languages. Additionally, goals were set to increase the Empire State Building’s social media presence by creating media with key “selfie-spots,” that encourage visitors to share memorable moments during their visit.

For the Construction Gallery on the first floor, historically accurate videos across 4 walls and ceiling display live-action footage with detailed animation, CGI and VFX. The resulting exhibit transports guests back in time through a looped film that features 30 different actors with hot rivets and steel beams flying overhead as the construction of the building is in full swing.

The Kong exhibit welcomes guests into a 1930s-era office inside of the Empire State Building, where a life-size King Kong clings to the side of the structure, peering in at viewers and dodging bi-planes as he climbs. Guests can climb into his hand and feel the rumble as he roars, while lights flicker overhead. Designed for selfie moments, the exhibit meets a key client goal of social media ‘shareability.’

Since the opening of the galleries in 2019, the Empire State Building has gone back to the top of the list of most visited attractions in New York according to research by Uber. In addition, The King Kong gallery went viral on Reddit at its opening, with over 200k upvotes.

Project Details
Design Team

Callum Cooper (creative director), Holly Houghton (executive project producer), Constance Nutall (creative producer), Archie McLeish (art director), Jonny Williams (creative technologist), Chris Kim (production assistant and editor), Antonia Blair (full stack developer), Siyuan Qiu (front end developer), Elias Zananiri (technical director), Yujie Jiang (junior designer)

Project Area

30,000 sq ft

Project Budget

Confidential