Autodesk’s customers use its software to design, plan, and test some of the most innovative, sustainable, resourceful, and inspirational products and projects out there. The Gallery at One Market Street was built to bring transparency to the process and celebrate great design, and thereby to educate and delight the public, to honor the designers, architects, and manufacturers who are its valued customers, and to inspire the the broader design community about the spirit of collaboration.

To help Autodesk achieve their project goals, we designed the space as a showcase for examples of world-class design assisted by Autodesk products—focusing especially on the Bay Area. The display content had to engage visitors at different levels of interaction, from graphic design to media to digital interactives while maintaining a logical, compelling narrative. We developed a modular custom exhibit display solution that put the focus on the artifacts while providing a variety of immersive experiences. This helped maintain a consistency among the artifacts, each of which was almost a separate project. In fact, some artifacts posed issues of their own, like the Ford Mustang Shelby GT-500 production vehicle that had to be lifted in through a window.

Downstream conducted extensive research and study into each artifact’s origins and design process. Our team strategized the story and choreographed and fine-tuned the visitor path and user experience. We curated the exhibits, using the modular exhibit system to customize each display so that all of the stories were unique but maintained a consistent look and feel. The results of our collaboration with Autodesk is an immersive, interactive experience full of rich, dynamic content, and it is now open to the public.