Turning a 300-foot ramp into an interactive journey through New York.

When Google opened its new Pier 57 campus, a historic 300-foot cargo ramp became the main connection between the building and its event spaces. We saw an opportunity to make the walk itself part of the experience.

I led the creative from the initial concept through production, developing Seasons of New York, an illustrated journey through the city that changes as you move through the space. I worked with an illustrator, motion designers, engineers, and developers to figure out not just what the experience should look like, but how it should actually behave.

The ramp is projection-mapped from floor to ceiling, with overhead LiDAR tracking people as they move through it. A step in the right place might trigger an animation, reveal a hidden interaction, or change what is happening around you. We built the system around the architecture of the ramp, rather than treating the technology as something layered on top of it.

Because the ramp also leads directly into Google’s primary event space, the experience needed to work beyond the everyday installation. Visiting companies and event sponsors needed to be represented within the environment, but simply placing logos into the scenes would have disrupted the visual language and made the experience feel like advertising.

Instead, I designed the system so branded content could become part of the world we had already created. A company might appear on a plane flying through the scene, on a banner carried through the city, or as part of an environmental detail. The content could be customized for an event while staying within the same visual and interactive language as the rest of the installation.

That distinction was important: the commercial content had a clear purpose, but it still had to feel considered and native to the experience. The sponsor wasn't taking over the environment. The environment gave the sponsor a place within the story.

The project turned a space people had to walk through into something they could actually explore, while creating a flexible platform for Google’s campus, events, and partners.