Ministry of
Foreign Affairs

2016 EU Presidency | Visitor Center

During the first half of 2016, the Netherlands will hold the Presidency of the European Union. The EU Presidency meetings will all take place at Amsterdam’s historical naval dockyard, the Marine Etablissement.

For this special event, Haute Technique was asked to design and create several interactive components for a newly realised visitor centre. The exhibition aims to shed light on the presidency's affairs, and is largely live-generated and interactive to make sure each person will have a different, personal experience.

At the heart of the expostion a large touch table is installed. Here visitors can create a custom avatar that will star in a personal movie regarding their very own connection with the EU. Answer questions by switching through different scenes, and personalise them by dragging objects onto the stage. After filling out each scene, your particular connection with the EU is presented to you a in fun animated short movie.

Further on in the exhibition, a digital calendar displays upcoming public and official events. On another display a social media stream presents the visitors content tweeted with #EU2016NL. Furthermore, a touchscreen offers students from De Haagse Hogeschool and Willem I College a place to present their views on the European Union and it's workings. Finally, one last touchscreen shows Europe from a different angle, literally. Users can swipe through interesting data-sets, which are live visualised in a fully threedimensial representation of the European Union.

Backstory

For the animation on the touchtable we were inspired by David Attenborough's famous nature documentaries. His tone of voice is both fascinating and ironic, which is perfect to present rather plain information in a rather exciting fashion. The animation should feel like an adventure, and the Voice Over's tone definetely helped in realising that.