Planet MTL Exhibition

Practice Area

Client

Biosphere Museum / Environment Canada

Project Vision

Planet MTL is an innovative educational exhibition that challenges visitors to consider what they love about their city in the context of what makes their city livable, lovable and sustainable despite modern issues such as pollution and climate change.

The artistic style of the exhibit combined graffiti art, a 360-degree time lapse film, sleek exhibit design, modern environmental graphics, and futuristic digital media. The physical design and layout is welcoming for all visitors, with wide doorways, uncluttered layout and accessible heights for interactive features. The exhibition is presented in French and English, with bilingual content displayed side by side on interpretive panels and available via a language toggle on all touch screens.

With the combination of RFID enabled personalized experience and dynamically generated projection mapped animations onto a 3D model of a city, the exhibition is unprecedented for a Canadian museum.

Visitors explore “windows” to their city that allow them to wonder what they love about their city and what they are willing to give up. The windows include interpretive panels, physical interactives and touch screen games. Visitors can design an eco-friendly outfit for fashion model, create a music festival or make their own poutine!

The city of Montreal comes to life on a physical 3D model. Above, a time-lapse film features the city of Montreal through a year, presented on a 360-degree screen. The seasonal animations synchronize with the time-lapse film to show dramatic weather, wildlife, foliage and reinforce the immersive experience.

Individual touch screen stations welcome visitors to take on up to 20 challenges. Outcomes from these challenges play out as eye-catching feedback. Dynamic user-triggered animations include traffic jams, polluted rivers and power outages. Visitors can make positive change to implement green roofs, add bike lanes and build more parks.

City-wide events, such as snowstorms, heat waves or music festivals interrupt gameplay with animations of fireworks, blizzards, and traffic jams. These interruptions require players to work together to solve the problem and remind them that the sum of their collective decisions is shared by all Montrealers.

As visitors prepare to leave the exhibit, visitors explore interpretive panels that broaden the topic from Montreal to other cities around the world. Visitors can ask themselves “How does Montreal compare?” Finally, an exit station asks visitors to make a pledge to sustainable change.

Project Details
Design Team

Lord Cultural Resources: Christina Sjoberg (interpretive planner), Kevin D’Innocenzo (interpretive planner), James Bruer (exhibit designer), Nick Roland (exhibit designer), Chelsea Canlas (graphic designer)Jessica Doig (executive producer), Diedre Feist (producer, project manager), Jan Beringer (experience lead), Andre Bussanich (art director), Luyi Wang (interface designer), Dan Asfar (story lead), Jason Clarke (content developer), Valerie Eades (technical lead), Eric Mui (Software Developer), Juan Lara (Software Developer), Mike Hunter (Software Developer), Nida Fatima (Animation Lead), Alex Greenberg (animator), James Nesbitt (video editor), Curtis Wright (audio editor)

Project Area

2750 sq ft

Project Budget

$640,000

Consultants

Ouranos Climate Change Experts

Fabricators

Expographiq, NGX Interactive & Id3 & Media FX