If you were going to redesign the entire concept of a museum, how might you do it?
Gorgeous building? Yes.
Beautiful gardens? Check.
Fabulous location? Naturally.
Ability to take the collection home with you? Well, almost—thanks to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s new whiz-bang tech innovation, an interactive experience meant to “redefine today’s museum experience and inspire each visitor to play designer.” Appropriately enough, the Cooper Hewitt has redesigned the now-common audio-tour handsets that resemble Swatch phones from the 80s into a new, twenty-first century high-tech interactive pen with smooth, new monochromatic color lines, curved edges, and updated retro aesthetics of the twenty-tens.
The Pen, which the Cooper Hewitt capitalizes, will allow users to “collect” objects, or at least the images of objects as they go through the museum. It provides added functionality, as well: visitors will be able to access their collections from home via a unique url, to search for objects by, for instance, “drawing” a vase shape (which will call up a register of all the museum’s vases), and to “play” with the objects on an interactive “touch table” as if it were a high-tech drafting table or dollhouse.
Playing is central to the museum’s redesign, which also includes an Interactive Room where visitors can re-wallpaper Andrew Carnegie’s Upper East Side mansion to suit their tastes, using any of the museum’s collected designs or by drawing one of their own. There’s a mini-golf green on the third level that hearkens back to Carnegie’s own use of that floor to practice his putting.
The coffee shop and gardens will open early, allowing residents of the nearby Upper East Side penthouses (or early risers willing to travel) to enjoy a quiet morning in the high style of Beaux Arts Park Avenue.
Image Courtesy of: Yisris
