Interiors3D uses Intuiface to build an interactive Visitors Guide for a Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition
Andrea Botolot
Principal
The fourth edition of the “TIME SPACE EXISTENCE” exhibition, hosted by European Cultural Centre for Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 (also known as the International Architecture Exhibition), featured over 150 exhibitors associated with the GAA Foundation. Each exhibitor - artists, architects, and more - created a unique presentation marrying artistic expression with classical architectural installations. Locations for these exhibits were throughout Venice, including Palazzo Mora, Palazzo Bembo, and Giardini Marinaressa.
The GAA Foundation wanted to properly honor their exhibitors and over 100 sponsors for this event using a publicly-accessible interactive digital visitor guide placed at each exhibition location.
With the assistance of the digital agency Interiors3D, an expert in 3D visualization, a set of key objectives were identified:
Interiors3D, led by Andrea Bortolot, identified a few challenges in delivering a successful Visitors Guide that could achieve the key objectives.
The first challenge was the volume of information. With as many as 100 exhibits in a single facility, Interiors3D recognized the need for an ideal data incorporation system that could efficiently organize a vast amount of information about the exhibit, featured architects, locations, and sponsor information.
The second challenge lay in managing and displaying a large volume of video content, including artist interviews, encoded in a wide variety of codecs. The digital experience had to flexibly enable high-quality playback of any media format.
Another challenge was creating interactive maps without coding. As non-developers, Bortolot and his team needed to find a toolset that could empower them to create and customize interactive maps with visual appeal, ease of comprehension, and rich information.
Finally, there was consideration of the performance and stability of the interactive solution, ensuring it could meet the expectations of sponsors and featured exhibitors who invested time and financial resources for the event. On that account, the team wanted to avoid undermining exhibitors’ exposure by maintaining perfect experience uptime independent from internet connectivity throughout the entire six-month exhibition.
Having used Intuiface in the past, Bortolot was well aware of its ability to facilitate the creation of engaging visual content, but he had not yet fully experienced its data integration capabilities. After a quick study, he learned how easily he could populate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with an unlimited amount of data and link them to a template built in Intuiface Composer.
This feature not only helped the team to simplify data management but it also accelerated the experience creation process by enabling Interiors3D to avoid overcrowding the experience with multiples scenes, settling on the use of a single cohesive template throughout the digital visitor guide.
In this way, touch interactions made in each virtual location would feature information and assets specific to that exhibit space, but the functionality and organization of data would be presented in the same way across the interactive map. Bortolot pointed to this ability as key to the scalability of Intuiface.
As expected, Intuiface’s broad video support resolved any concerns regarding the playback of exhibitor interview videos. Compared to the most major digital signage software options in the market that support only a couple of popular video formats, Intuiface offered total freedom in such regard, eliminating the need for extra time and effort in converting codecs.
Fully touch-interactive maps were also made possible through Intuiface’s Map Collection. Interiors3D designers could assign geographic coordinates to exhibition facilities on the maps and couple each one of them with visual media. A seamless navigation experience was achieved as initially expected.
The concerns around Internet connectivity and possible downtime were addressed thanks to Intuiface’s ability to work in offline environments. This function made it possible to save the experience directly onto local devices for offline playback and offer unconstrained high-quality performance and availability of the digital visitor guide experience throughout the whole six-month period.
Throughout Venice Architecture Biennale, Interiors3D’s interactive digital Visitors Guide welcomed guests at the doorstep of “TIME SPACE EXISTENCE” exhibition facilities, inviting them to step inside and view innovative creations highlighted by a virtual tour.
Two separate 46” pedestal displays were installed at the entrance of each location, enabling visitors to browse the list of exhibitors and become acquainted with their stories. This helped guests to easily engage and dive deeper into exhibition content. The solution also served perfectly in its role as a tour guide showcasing the beauty and the depth of featured work, conveying the charm of Venice to visitors from across the globe.
Social media integration encouraged deeper visitor engagement as it created an instant and easy means for people to communicate their experience beyond the confines of the event.
The interactive digital guide delivered an utterly positive experience that visitors - after their first encounter with the kiosk - would seek out on subsequent visits at different locations in a quest to better apprehend and enjoy the exhibition.
Exhibitors and sponsors were both extremely pleased with the exposure they received through the digital Visitors Guide. GAA Foundation and European Culture Centre were also thrilled with the level of social media interaction initiated by visitors. The connections they made on social media enabled them to actively share information about upcoming events and collect feedback about the “TIME SPACE EXISTENCE 2018” exhibition.
Interiors3D was greatly appreciated for the creativity and aesthetics of their work, which magnified the architectural innovation and the artistic design featured in the exhibits.
In the long term, Bortolot and his team intend to reuse the solution package (hardware, content, and design templates) from the Venice Architecture Biennale in many upcoming exhibitions hosted by GAA Foundation given the ease and speed of content customization experienced with Intuiface.
In the short term, Interiors3D will replicate parts of this experience and update the interactive content for the upcoming Venice Art Biennale which will launch on May 11, 2019. This 120-year-old event will feature sculpture, painting, photography, dance and other art forms from around the globe and attract over 500,000 visitors including world-renowned artists and art enthusiasts. Interiors3D is excited to continue to use Intuiface to design interactive digital experiences for events in the future that will bring people together and create connections tailored for physical spaces.
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