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web lab
Exploring the internet’s invisible systems through physical design.
We collaborated on the industrial design of Web Lab, a year-long interactive exhibition at London’s Science Museum. Developed with Google and partners, the lab invited online and in-person visitors to engage with five connected experiments—each rethinking how we perceive and interact with the internet.
What if the internet could be experienced, not just accessed? Web Lab was a year-long exhibition at the Science Museum in London, developed in collaboration with Google Creative Lab and a multidisciplinary team of partners. The project invited museum visitors and online participants to interact with five experiments. Each one of them blends the physical and digital to reveal the internet’s unseen processes.
We led the industrial design across these experiences, crafting physical forms that complemented the complexity of the systems beneath them. In Universal Orchestra, we reimagined musical instruments as sculptural interfaces – distilling a marimba into a vertical ring of tone bars, and transforming drums into a spiral of suspended blocks. Each piece played live, online and in-person, powered by internet latency and audience interaction.
Sketchbots used custom-built robot arms to draw portraits in sand. Whether visiting in person or online, users could watch their photo rendered as a physical sketch, then gently erased by a mechanical blade – inviting reflection on the impermanence of digital memory. Each station was housed in a robust, lab-like frame, designed to support constant engagement.
In Data Tracer, we visualised the journey of web data using projection-mapped paths on a physical world map. Users could search for an image and trace the route the internet takes to retrieve it, bridging digital speed with physical geography. Other experiments, like the Teleporter, used 360° live video feeds and immersive pods to transport users to distant locations, combining audio, projection, and interaction into a shared, global experience.
Central to the exhibition was the Lab Tag: a personal visual code that let every participant, whether online or on-site, collect and revisit their experiences. At the heart of it all was a simple provocation: how do we understand something as vast, fast, and intangible as the internet? Web Lab offered one answer through meaningful, human interaction.
