Following the $91m (€86m, £62m) renovation of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, in New York, USA, visitors are now offered a truly with interactive and immersive experience, entwined with creative technologies.

Masterplanned by Gluckman Mayner Architects alongside Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners with Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) designing the exhibition spaces on the ground, first and second floor galleries – the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum has been completely transformed.

One of the most interesting new features of the museum's 60 per cent extra gallery space is the extreme amount of cutting edge technology that has been worked into the design.

Guided by an interactive ‘Pen’ - provided to visitors on arrival - guests are able to curate their own experience by ‘collecting’ and ‘saving’ objects digitally from any of the galleries. Created especially for Cooper Hewitt by Local Projects and DS+R, this bit of kit ensures a decidedly personal experience.

The Pen allows a guest to add anything from the museum’s collection to their own personal list and it explore it on the ‘Collection Browsers’, located on seven interactive tables spread across of the museum’s floors – the tables themselves use projected capacitive touch technology and ultra-high definition. This personal collection links up to a web address where a visitor can log on and find out more about the objects at any time.

In the new ‘Immersion Room’ on the second floor, visitors can use their Pen to interact with the exhibition developed by Idium – playing designer on any of the 4K resolution touchscreen tables – and projecting their own designs, and some of the museum's vast wallpaper collection on the walls.

Discussing the new features in a statement, Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor of New York City, and firm supporter of the museum said: “Cooper Hewitt is a great example of how technology can help arts organisations educate, expand horizons and engage audiences in new ways - The museum’s digital technology gives visitors a chance to become designers and collectors themselves and it makes a trip to the museum an even more rewarding experience.”


Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum from Local Projects on Vimeo.