Client: Greater Orlando Aviation Authority

Overview

For the Orlando International Airport’s new Terminal C, we designed a series of immersive multimedia experiences and installations which explore the knowns and unknowns of greater Central Florida. The project reimagines the passenger experience by offering unexpected moments of magic within the world’s seventh-busiest airport.

We transformed the airport into the destination itself, providing thought-provoking collective moments of magic that reshape how passengers connect with the city and surrounding region. The multimedia content is integrated into two large-scale features. As a result, an expected 60 million annual travellers passing through Terminal C will be able to discover over 70 video capsules that are curated and scheduled based on the passenger journey, in consideration of dwelling time, time of day and season.

Goals

As Orlando’s primary gateway and the world’s sixth busiest airport, we wanted to improve the overall aesthetic quality of the new Terminal C while also providing it with a strong identity to accommodate its anticipated 60 million annual travelers. Staying true to the region’s cultural and historical legacy of wildlife, diverse landscapes, aerospace travel, local art, theme parks and more, we set out to tell a story about the knowns and unknowns of greater Central Florida.

Using multimedia magic, we created a new passenger experience that restores the joy and wonder of air travel, bringing peace and tranquility to a typically stressful environment while seamlessly blending into the architecture itself. In doing so, the project reimagines how public space can be interacted with and how passersby can also interact with each other through shared experiences.

Process

In addition to Gentilhomm’s in-house designers, cinematographers, creative coders and technologists, we worked with a number of design and architecture firms as well as creative partners and organizations to build a design system and source content, respectively.

Our system’s design was produced in collaboration with Sardi Design, Burns Engineering, and many more. Original and exclusive video content was sourced directly from Nasa, Space-X, and Disney to showcase the region’s history of space travel and wildlife in resolution large enough to cast on screens over a hundred feet wide.

After extensively researching the region’s greatest landmarks, Gentilhomme filmed in a number of historically-significant locations, teaming up with esteemed wildlife cinematographer Tom Fitz for underwater filming of manatees in Orlando’s Crystal River. The work of The Highwaymen, a group of Black painters who never received the recognition they deserved, was sourced and formatted for the architectural showpiece, using generative imagery to create motion within the work.

Using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, interactivity technology was central to this work, putting the user in fantasy worlds such as martian landscapes and schools of fish which can not only be viewed, but participated with.