Visit Antwerp

A visitor center inside Antwerp’s oldest building, made of stories, people, and places.

Het Steen, Antwerp (BE), 2021

Parent and child closely examining the drawers of a historic wooden cabinet in a red-patterned room at Het Steen, discovering tactile and visual elements of Antwerp’s past.

The overview

Het Steen is an 800-year-old historic fortress and the oldest building in Antwerp. It also happens to house the city’s main visitor center. Instead of standard, boring tourist brochures, the space uses an 11-room interactive path to introduce visitors to Antwerp’s distinct neighborhoods, complex history, iconic landmarks, and vibrant contemporary culture.

The experience uses digital media, immersive 360° projections, and spatial storytelling to unpack Antwerp’s past and present, helping people orient themselves before they go out to explore.

  • Female visitor touching a vertical touchscreen display embedded in a large cabinet structure, revealing layered stories through artworks and animated content.
  • Distant view of an immersive theatrical installation, with a woman seated in the foreground watching life-sized projections of actors in costume performing inside a recreated artist’s studio.
  • Child seated among oversized wooden architectural models, gazing up in awe at a screen embedded in the wooden structure above.
  • Woman looking up inside a vertical wooden structure with a digital ceiling screen displaying a kaleidoscopic architectural animation.
  • Child interacting with a large touchscreen display embedded in a wooden exhibit structure, surrounded by architectural models and warm lighting.

The work

I led the UX/UI and multimedia design for the entire visitor experience. My job was to figure out how the digital interactions should behave and how the various audiovisual elements would talk to one another. I designed a consistent visual and interaction system that linked screens, massive projections, and spatial touchpoints, ensuring visitors could navigate the journey without getting lost.

To make things even more memorable, we built this entire experience during the peak of COVID-19 constraints. I had to coordinate multidisciplinary teams across design and production while juggling remote workflows, unhealthy doses of uncertainty, and the honest fact that I never saw the place in real life due to the shutdown. Every single interface, interactive installation, and piece of user-facing design was mapped out and built by navigating nothing but floor plans and technical drawings from afar. If that isn’t hardcore design, I don’t know what is.

  • Woman exploring a room lined with life-size vertical screens, each presenting cultural stories and visuals from different neighborhoods of Antwerp.
  • Woman using a large horizontal touchscreen map alongside a wooden scale model of Antwerp, in a sunlit room with tall windows.
  • Woman and child inside an immersive panoramic projection room with floor-to-ceiling visuals of a car terminal and cargo ship.
  • Woman and child engaging with a large interactive map table; both smiling and pointing to different elements on the digital surface in a warmly lit room.

The result

  • Directed the UX/UI and multimedia design for a multi-room visitor center.
  • Designed a unified interaction framework that successfully connected digital screens and environmental projections.
  • Translated dense historical and cultural archives into engaging, interactive installations.
  • Guided remote and local teams across design, content, and production to keep the project moving forward.
  • Delivered the entire experience on time despite the logistical nightmare of pandemic-era restrictions and without setting foot on-site once.
  • Woman interacting with a horizontal touchscreen exhibit focused on craftsmanship and local industry, featuring large visuals and text in a softly lit space.
  • Woman standing in a dimly lit attic space, listening to an audio track through a handset while interacting with a touchscreen display embedded in a wooden podium.
  • Two women and a child observing a large vertical digital display showing a high-resolution reproduction of a classical painting, inside a bright gallery space with tall windows.
  • A child sits on the floor while a woman stands nearby, both immersed in an interactive installation where colorful visuals and texts about Antwerp’s creative industry are projected onto the floor and wall.

Credits

Role: Art Director | Lead Designer
Employer: Studio Louter
Client: Visit Antwerp
Photography: Ocular

© Studio Louter. All rights reserved.

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Middelen Meter

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