Sony Wonder Technology Lab

At Sony Wonder Technology Lab, visitors use Signal Stations to create profiles and send messages to other users or broadcast them on huge transparent projection screens.

An artifact-based diorama on the history of communication technology is located along the museum's ramp, slowing visitors down as they descend through the space. When visitors tap their ID cards, their images appear on a grainy black-and-white

TV set in the diorama, as well as on newer versions of televisions.

A multimedia presentation on nanotechnology teaches visitors about the concept of a billionth, then allows them to explore current and future applications of the technology in various industries.

Using haptic technology often used by surgeons, guests can actually feel what it's like to perform open-heart surgery.

In an area where traffic tends to slow while visitors are waiting for the next experience, an interactive floor installation by media artist Scott Snibbe encourages social interaction by generating colored circles in response to visitors' movements.

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The second-generation Sony Wonder Technology Lab

negotiates a new deal between technology, architecture, and experience.

In many ways, the newly renovated Sony Wonder

Technology Lab—Sony Corporation of America’s

interactive, free-to-the-public museum in midtown Manhattan—reflects the evolution of our love affair with

technology.

When the museum first opened in 1994, the age of

computing was still relatively new and we were fascinated with “high tech”: the workings and physicality of it, the

hardware and cables and shiny metal boxes.

Fast-forward 16 years and the world is a different place.

We take technology for granted and we don’t want to see the cables and boxes. We demand transparency,

adaptability, portability, and immediate response.

“So the design language needed to change dramatically,”

says Lee Skolnick, principal of Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership (New York). In 2001,

Sony asked the firm to revamp the museum’s second level, which was completed in 2003. In 2005, Skolnick was asked

back to lead the redesign of the rest of the four-level space.

“Instead of focusing on technology for technology’s sake,

we wanted the museum to be about technology as an enabler,” says Lisa Davis, senior director of

communications and public affairs at Sony Corporation of

America. Sony wanted the museum to embody the “3 Cs,”

emphasizing how technology helps us create, connect, and

communicate.

It also needed to showcase some of the world’s most advanced technologies—some of it not yet commercially

available. And it needed to withstand the enthusiasm of

more than 200,000 annual visitors, many of them schoolchildren.

Metaphorical world

Skolnick’s challenge was to create an environment that seamlessly merges interaction and connectivity. “What that

means to me as a designer is that the communication, the architecture, and the media are all as one, and whenever

possible, visitors are interacting with the environment

itself, not just a station.”

His Big Idea—the one he literally came up with on an airplane—was that if we all interact with technology and

communications in the real world, why not create a

metaphorical world that is self-contained, completely immersive, and actually formed from the communications

created by visitors?

From that, Skolnick’s architectural vision emerged: a

glossy white envelope on which every surface is alive with projections or embedded with media. A sleeve formed by

curved white floor-to-ceiling panels is peeled back in places to accommodate windows, doors, screens, and

infrastructural requirements. Mesh acoustical ceiling tiles

and glass also punctuate the space. Against this backdrop, visitors interact with technology using hardware encased in

sinuous white powdercoated-metal forms—the antithesis of

traditional “kiosks.”

On arrival, visitors log in and create personal profiles, which are recorded on RFID cards they use throughout the

space. As they collect experiences during their visit, bits

and pieces of their profile data are manipulated, shared, tweaked, and broadcast in the space itself.

“We want people to understand that from the moment they

enter, they are in a special world that operates according to

its own rules, like entering a huge 4D game,” explains Skolnick. “As you move through it, you create a storyline

that moves with you.”

Getting the tech right

With technology as both a central content theme as well as

the primary delivery system, getting it right was crucial. Technology consultants were embedded in the project from

the onset, a contrast to the more typical model where

designers design, then find someone to translate the concept to reality.

“Now, in a time when technology is a means for us to

understand and mediate a complex world, designers and

technology experts have to work together much earlier in the process,” says Eli Kuslansky, co-founder and managing

partner of Unified Field (New York), which partnered with Skolnick on design and development of media, software,

and interfaces. Three Byte Intermedia handled the systems

integration and updated the museum’s back-end infrastructure. “Projects like this one are about creating

instant communication and constant dialogue, and that has

to be done in a transparent way,” adds Kuslansky.

Skolnick agrees. “We needed their expertise to know what was possible. We needed them sitting at the table as we

fleshed out the content, providing input on how it would be

delivered and interacted with. We especially knew there would be big expectations around the interfaces, so we

called on their expertise for going beyond touchscreens and push buttons.”

When it came to selecting the technologies to be showcased in the museum, Sony had strong ideas and a vast treasure

trove of resources. Members of the design team traveled all over the country to understand Sony’s products, and

worked with eight different Sony divisions on content and

technology. They also sought out a wide range of content and technology experts.

Ultimately, the museum employs several technologies that

have never existed outside the R&D laboratory. Visitors

use haptic (touch) technology to perform virtual open heart surgery, generate digital profiles with integrated–circuit

smart cards using RFID technology, create computer animations using real-time 3D visualization, program

robots, and work in a state-of-the-art high-definition TV

studio.

Ramping it down

For all its virtual magic, the museum does exist in physical

space. And the four-story, 14,000-sq.-ft. floor plan was not without its challenges.

Visitors enter the museum on the ground floor, then take

glass elevators to the fourth floor, where they log in and work their way through the space down a series of

Guggenheim-like, ADA-accessible ramps.

“What we’ve learned from experience is that when people

are on ramps—particularly kids—the motivation is to get down them as soon as possible,” says Skolnick.

So part of the design team’s challenge was to slow them

down. They did that by adding things to see and do along

the way, and by expanding some already-existing platforms so visitors could detour and interact with new stations and

activities. The “Anytime, Anywhere” exhibit is an artifact-based timeline that chronicles the history of

communications technology, from early telephones and

televisions to the latest high-tech gadgets. Even this diorama-like exhibit is interactive: when guests tap their ID

cards on special card readers, their images are broadcast on a grainy old black-and-white TV set, an HD TV, and a new

OLED TV to emphasize improvements in picture quality.

“Signal Stations” along the ramp, along with all of the

museum’s other interactive exhibits, are activated by the same tap of an ID card. They recognize the guest’s profile,

greet the guest personally, and guide him or her through

various activities to manipulate profile data, then broadcast it to other stations or to huge transparent projection screens

for all to see.

Into the light

Beyond the demands of user interfaces, transparency, and

seamlessness, Skolnick says his personal goal was to create the antithesis of the typical dark, “cave-like” science and

technology museum.

“Today, because of the strength, clarity, and brightness of

screen technology, we don’t need to be in the dark anymore. I wanted to create a place that was bright and

cheerful, not spooky or ominous.”

Karen Kelso, the Wonder Lab’s executive director, says the

redesigned museum succeeds, too, in bringing technology to light. “We set out to demystify technology,” she

explains. “In the past, it was appreciated from afar. We wanted to invite children to experience technology in a

hands-on setting, to spark their creativity and show them

that, using their imaginations and technology, they can create virtually anything.”

--By Pat Matson Knapp, segdDESIGN No. 26, 2009

SONY WONDER TECHNOLOGY LAB

Location: New York

Client: Sony Corporation of America

Architecture, Exhibition Design, and Graphics: Lee H.

Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership

Design Team: Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA, Paul Alter, Jo Ann

Secor (principals); Peter Hyde, (senior exhibit

designer/project manager); Alethea Cheng (senior

associate/project manager); Miguel Cardenas (senior design associate); Maja Gilberg (senior interpretive manager);

James Hollingsworth (senior exhibit designer); Richard Bressani, Linda Feinberg (exhibit designers); Christina

Lyons (senior graphic designer); Daphne Smith (graphic

designer)

Construction Management: Big Show Construction Management

Consultants: Unified Field (design and development of media, software, and interfaces), Three Byte Intermedia

(A/V systems integration, back-end infrastructure), Scharff-Weisberg (A/V consulting), Available Light (lighting

design)

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