Zaza Zuilhof

Year      2014 - 2017
Role      Senior - Lead Designer Client    Dubai Government
Team    Tellart

Museum of the Future
A series of yearly returning exhibitions at the World Government Summit in Dubai, immersing global leaders and policy-makers in tangible experiences of plausible future scenarios.

The exhibitions invite visitors into immersive, multi-sensory scenarios set in the future. The projects are designed to spark meaningful debate around our preferred tomorrow and the decisions we make today that will affect it.

All scenarios are based on trends in technology and society today. To emphasize the plausibility of the presented futures, the 2016 exhibition opened with a gallery of products and services from today, that point towards the future visions visitors were about to experience.

One of the scenarios presented as part of the 2015 edition, was Fitzania. This immersive environment represents one of a series of touchpoints in a future hyper-connected health service.

Aimed at children, Fitzania replaces regular health check-ups, with an immersive and fun game experience at the mall.
Moving a weighted sphere in 3D space, the game tracks your physical motion, gaze and biometrics. Upon finishing the game the players receive personalized health feedback.

Today our smartphones are never far from our hands, tomorrow they might be in our hands. The Augmentation Spa was a scenario in the 2016 edition of the Museum of the Future. Visitors enter a cross between a high end surgical suite and relaxing spa.

Various products on display allow us to imagine what consumer grade physical, emotional and cognitive augmentations to our body might bring us.

Using custom VR headsets visitors were able to ‘try on’ a select set of augmentations. Questions arise around control, dependency and privacy in such an intimate man-machine relationship.

In this opening scenario to the 2017 exhibition, visitors are welcomed on the deck of Dubai’s latest offshore bio-desalination plant. A 360° projection takes visitors on a tour below water, revealing the natural processes that filter saltwater into clean drinking water.

Harnessing the powers of biomimicry and bioengineering, this freshwater factory combines the genes of a jellyfish, a highly absorptive natural material, with mangrove roots, one of nature's best desalinators.

The exhibit series directly inspired numerous government initiatives in the UAE, including the creation of a permanent Museum of the Future.

Behind the Scenes
This series of projects posed a very unique opportunity. No one had every developed something like it at this scale. Being able to do it multiple years in a row, allowed us to explore, stumble, learn and eventually develop a solid process.

Important inspiration came from research into challenges that government leaders and their respective constituents face today. A combination of Interviews, Observational Research and Desk Research gave us invaluable insights that made our future scenarios more relevant to the local issues and latent needs.

Collaborating closely with a diverse group of futurists and experts from various fields, ensured that our scenarios were grounded in real developments in technology and society today.

Having a mix of code capable designers and design capable technologists, allowed us to create several unique interfaces, that let visitors immerse in the future scenarios, without breaking the world.

Each exhibit presented several scenarios, but they were always tied together by a shared theme and overarching narrative. Above is the example of the 2016 edition, where visitors experienced three future scenarios in which we develop an increasingly intimate relationship with our machinic counterparts and our human agency slowly decreases. Asking overarching questions around control, dependency and privacy in a world of increased machinic intelligence.

Acknowledgments
In each edition we collaborated with various partners throughout the process–

I was part of Tellart’s core team of 4-6 people, in charge of overall concept, design, UX and flow, as well as most object and furniture design, especially those that integrated closely with hardware.

In the early stages we worked with futurists such as Changeists and Superflux. In the production phase we  involved partners with specialised skillsets based on the needs of the design, including Marshmallow Laser Feast, Idee und Klang, Lust, SoftLab and Scatter. The overall event was coordinated by PublicisLive, AV was installed by Neumann Mueller and furniture and scenography was fabricated by Projex.

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zazazuilhof [at] gmail.com
@zazazoe