Smith and Jones were commissioned as visitor centre designers by EDF for the creation of a brand new visitor centre at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Smith and Jones developed the vision for the visitor centre, from a blank canvas and following extensive research into the nuclear industry and technology being used at Hinkley Point C.
We created a strong, defined concept with the visitor journey initially starting in an immersive presentation space. Here multiple projectors created a seamless curved introductory presentation with various content controlled by a central digital interface.
Displays explored different energy generation methods, highlighting how these technologies work and which ones are suitable as part of the UK’s energy mix.
We introduced turbines as these are at the heart of many energy generation methods, including nuclear. We gave visitors the opportunity to start up a model turbine from a digital interactive counter, and see how power is generated.
We focussed on the technology at HPC, creating a detailed nuclear reactor model, which could be explored by the surrounding digital interactive counter.
The concept of net zero was communicated via an interactive game, where visitors could choose different future energy mixes and see which ones achieved net zero.
This was a highly complex and involved project, with Smith and Jones managing every element of the project, including all audio visual specifications and art direction of digital content, films and augmented reality.
