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By Alan Joch

Moving into the new century

What does an electronics company do when its showpiece technology lab starts to show its age? For Sony Corporation, the answer was to renovate, to the tune of $4 million and months of brainstorming. Sony’s four-story Wonder Technology Lab, designed by Ed Schlossberg, opened in New York City in 1994—an epoch ago measured in high-tech time. “We wanted to move from analog facility to digital facility,” says Ann Morfogen, a Sony senior vice president. Sony also wanted to differentiate the renovation from a design perspective. “When the lab first opened, people were wowed by the physical language of technology—the wires, connections, and hardware,” notes the project’s architect, Lee H. Skolnick, FAIA, principal of Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership in New York. “It was a case of wearing technology on your sleeve.”

In the renovation, which opened in October, the emphasis is instead on integrating technology into the physical design. “We wanted a look that was modern, cool, comfortable—and to forget about the hardware,” Skolnick says. A team from Sony joined forces with Skolnick’s group and an A/V systems integrator for six months of “creative interaction,” Morfogen says. Josh Weisberg, principal of the systems integrator, Scharff Weisberg of Queens, joined the team early because the underlying A/V needs would be key to bringing the creative ideas to life. “We couldn’t simply use consumer devices—we had to take the technology to the next level with sophisticated computer systems to handle all of this processing,” Skolnick says. The majority of the computers run in a behind-the-scenes, 8-by-12-foot room where custom-designed controls automatically run digital-video servers and the lighting system.

Visitors to LACMA’s nano play with supersize images of molecules called Buckyballs, named for their resemblance to Buckminster Fuller’s domes. Photography:Courtesy UCLA Academic Technology Services staff

Because it wanted to emphasize the “magic” of technology, the design group eschewed monitors and keyboards in favor of wall-size video projections, vibrating floors, and sensor-activated instruments that place visitors within the exhibits, Weisberg says.

For example, the games exhibit isn’t merely an arcade to display the latest and greatest video systems—instead, visitors find themselves immersed in a game thanks to A/V technology such as directional sound and large-screen monitors.

A related exhibit lets visitors create a racetrack and cars for their own auto racing game. This “activated environment,” Skolnick says, relies on modulated lighting and video images that move across the floors. A curved wall stretches throughout the renovated second-floor space to act as a common design element, tying the exhibits together. Made of a custom lenticular material, the wall’s surface ridges are molded at various angles that refract the changing color patterns shining through from behind the wall. “As you move through the lab, the visuals on the wall change,” Skolnick explains. “We developed a color palette for the entire space, and you see all of those colors on the wall.” Skolnick worked with a British supplier to produce the material in large, wall-size sheets, rather than the small panels typically manufactured for toys and advertising trinkets. “Using the material on this scale, as an environmental element, was a new thing,” Skolnick says.

Another challenge was how to use the open, skylit atrium space adjacent to the lab to attract attention. “We wanted people in the atrium to see how visitors in the lab were empowered to do exciting things,” says Skolnick. The design team created a video montage, using real-time, live-action scenes from inside the lab, and a bay window in the atrium as a large projection screen. To cut down on glare and reflections, they treated the window with a self-adhesive, high-gain acrylic film that provides a surface opaque enough to display the images, but translucent enough to let light pass through.

For Skolnick, whose company has been designing interactive exhibits for 20 years, the lesson of this project is that design and technology will continue to become ever more intertwined. “It’s not about people just pushing buttons, but rather, it’s creating more natural interfaces to bridge architecture and technology and make them one.”